


Seeking the Green

by Seraina (seraina_doom)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Adoptive Parents - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chronic Illness, Dad max, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Mom Furiosa, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, anger issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 35,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraina_doom/pseuds/Seraina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max Rockatansky, police officer and adoptive father of five teenaged girls lives across the street from Furiosa Jobassa, truck driver and mother of two troubled teenaged boys.</p>
<hr/>
<p>“Settle down, Dag. I’ll sort this out.” He took a steadying breath and knocked on the neighbor’s door.</p>
<p>It only now occurred to him that he’d never even met Ms. Jobassa or her son. But it was a little too late to back out now. Especially when her eyes met his, then looked down at his uniform and her frown deepened. “What’s this about, Officer?”</p>
<p>“Ah, no. I mean, it’s not what you think.” He offered a small and reasonably reassuring smile. He felt Cheedo press up against his side. “I’m the neighbor across the street. My daughter says your son broke her bike.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Neighbors

Max sighed and walked along the sidewalk to the small but well-cared for house across the street. He’d just got home off of his shift and was still in uniform when two of his girls rushed him at the door. He was met by a spitting mad Dag (Dagmar, fifteen years old) and a crying Cheedo (Chelsea, fourteen years old). He backed out the door, listening to the complaints against the neighbor’s boy for trashing Cheedo’s bike and calling Dag names. Thankfully the other three girls decided not to get involved in this strange inter-house war.

“Settle down, Dag. I’ll sort this out.” He took a steadying breath and knocked on the neighbor’s door.

It only now occurred to him that he’d never even met Ms. Jobassa or her son. But it was a little too late to back out now. Especially when her eyes met his, t hen looked down at his uniform and her frown deepened. “What’s this about, Officer?”

“Ah, no. I mean, it’s not what you think.” He offered a small and reasonably reassuring smile. He felt Cheedo press up against his side. “I’m the neighbor across the street. My daughter says your son broke her bike.”

She looked at him, then Cheedo and Dag and turned over her shoulder. “SIMON! GET DOWN HERE.”

He winced a little at the sudden shouting but watched the skinny teenager descend the stairs. “What?” 

Max looked the kid over, taking note of his shaved head and the scars on his face that looked like someone tried to carve him up like a pumpkin.

“Rockatansky next door says you broke the girl’s bike?” Jobassa stood leaning against the doorway, still blocking the entrance to the house, but watched her son step up behind her.

“Didn’t touch any bikes.” He stood straight and crossed his arms, which made Cheedo sink further behind him.

“Yeah well one of you did it!” Dag hissed from Max’s other side.

One? There were two boys? Max made a mental note to keep a better watch on the other children in the neighborhood.

Ms. Jobassa turned back to her son with an apologetic look. He didn’t seem surprised. “Go get Nick.”

“He’s sleeping. He probably didn’t do it anyway. Blondie is probably just making it up anyway.” The teenager protested, but a look from his mother made him turn back to trudge up the stairs.

They waited in silence until the heavy footsteps of two teenagers came down the worn stairs. The second boy, Nick, looked terrible with almost a grey pallor and dark circles under his eyes. He looked like a Halloween prop come to life and now Max felt bad for dragging this poor kid from sleep that he obviously needed.

“The Officer said his kid’s bike is broken. Did you do it?”

He looked at his mother first, then bright blue eyes landed on Max and he straightened from his slouch, revealing that he was taller than Max. “Yeah.” 

“Why?” Jobassa asked him, since he either didn’t mind telling the truth or thought he had a good cover story.

“Cheedo called Slit ugly.” He looked over at Cheedo, who continued to hide behind Max.

He should have taken that overtime shift when it was offered. He turned towards his youngest, extracting her from her hiding spot. “Is this true?”

Cheedo nodded and squeaked out a meek affirmative. Max saw Simon stiffen in the background until Nick threw his arm around him in solidarity.

“Apologize to… Simon,” he glanced over at Ms. Jobassa who confirmed the name with a small nod.

“I’m sorry Simon.” Cheedo glanced up at the older boy, then flicked her eyes back down. Max turned to Dag.

“I’m sorry I accused Slit for something Nux did.” She replied crisply and not nearly as sincere as Cheedo was, but he knew that was the best he was going to get from her.

Some throat clearing inside the house prompted Nick to speak up. “I’m sorry I broke your bike. Bring it over tomorrow before school and I’ll fix it.”

Cheedo gave a shy smile and nod and took Dag’s hand, dragging her back towards their house. The boys took that cue to leave, Simon helping Nick up the stairs.

“Sorry for bothering you.” He said to Ms. Jobassa.

“It’s fine. Usually it is Slit’s fault. But I guess there’s a first time for everything.” She straightened and ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair.

“You call him Slit?” 

“When I adopted them, they already had those nicknames. Slit and Nux.” She cast a fond look up the stairs. “Isn’t one of your kids called ‘Toast’?”

He smiled a little. “Yeah. Mine were nicknamed before they came to me too. Still haven’t figured out why she’s called ‘Toast’.”

They shared a smile, that connection. They each knew the other would understand what other parents wouldn’t. That this was one of those things that came with fostering or adopting. Some old habits are hard to unlearn.

“Well, goodbye Officer Rockatansky.” She nodded and started closing the door.

He dipped his head in a quick nod. “Goodbye Ms. Jobassa.”

He turned to head back home where, hopefully, everything would settle back to normal.

Normal was five sets of eyes staring him as he walked into the kitchen. “What?”

“Well?” Capable (Catherine, age sixteen) asked, running her hands along her red braids. “How’d it go?”

“How did what go?” He asked and checked the stove for whatever Angharad (her actual name, seventeen years old) was cooking.

“Did you tell her off for letting those skinhead war boys run around and break things?” Toast (Tina, sixteen years old) demanded as she finished setting the table.

“No.” He put the lid back on the pot and headed towards his room to change out of his uniform. Toast and Capable followed. 

“Why not?” Toast asked, confrontational whenever she assumed things were unfair.

“Bike wasn’t broken for no reason. Cheedo called Simon ugly. Nick retaliated. He said he’d fix the bike tomorrow.” He shooed them out of the room, but could hear them shuffle outside while he took off his uniform and traded it for a fresh t-shirt and sweatpants.

“Slit is ugly. Not even to do with his scars either. He’s just nasty to everyone.” Toast complained.

“He is not. He’s just. He’s just angry,” Capable took the side of reason. He was thankful for that, at least.

He gently pushed the two girls back towards the kitchen. “What’s the story with them?”

“Well,” Toast started, dropping into her chair. “Their mom is part of some lesbian biker gang called, get this, the Vuvalini. Or she was. That’s the rumor at least.”

“Uh huh.” He looked to Dag, who filled her plate with salad and barely any of the main course.

“Slit and Nux are juniors. Well, Slit is. Don’t know what’s happening with the other one. He dropped out or something.” 

“Slit is in my English lit class,” Toast fills in. “Never wants to read in class, but nobody ever does.”

“Nux was in my calculus class, until he stopped coming to school.” Capable said around taking bites of her dinner. “He was always nice enough.”

He mulled it all over in his head, the picture coming together. Strong woman adopted the boys, one scarred and the other sick. He could see why the older one turned to anger. He probably didn’t have an outlet for it. “What’s their mother do?”

Angharad looked up from one of her text books. “She’s a truck driver. Drives a big rig. Sometimes she parks it in the mall lot next to the bookstore.” Angharad would know, she’s had a part-time job at the bookstore since she turned sixteen.

Someone finally changed the subject to weekend plans and he was able to eat in peace. The evening was quiet and he slept about as much as he usually did. The next morning, he woke up in time to make breakfast for the girls, something he did on all of his days off. He happily packed lunches for Dag and Cheedo, the other girls buying their lunches. When he saw the kids get on the school bus, he decided to take care of this bike issue once and for all.

He puzzled over the gears and the pieces that were found by the sabotaged bike but without knowing exactly how it was supposed to fit together, it seemed more work to do than walk it across the street.

Ms. Jobassa was sitting in the garage, reading a newspaper when he walked up.

“That’s the infamous bike, huh? Pink. Just like I expected it to be.” She folded up the newspaper and stood up. “Nux’s still asleep. I don’t like waking him up before he’s ready. You want some coffee?”

He nodded. “Yes please.” 

He left the bike and parts in the garage and followed her into the house. It was only now in the daylight that he realized she was missing most of her left arm. He did his best not to stare, just looked around her kitchen when she let him in. The walls were painted a mint green. There were boots on a mat on the floor. Nothing was too terribly feminine, but the place had a nice homey feel to it.

“How do you like your coffee, Officer?”

“Max. Just black is fine.” He watched her pop one of the pre-packaged coffee pods into the machine and when the liquid stopped, she set the mug on the table for him.

“It just occurred to me that we’ve been neighbors for three years and I didn’t know your first name.” She got her own mug and sat down across from him. “Mine’s Furiosa.”

He nodded, sipping hos coffee. “Yesterday was the first time we really met.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard all the rumors by now though.”

“Lesbian biker gang.” He watched her as she shook her head.

“It was an all female club. And they were also very surprised when I adopted the boys.” She set her mug down. “What about you?”

“There was a case I worked on. Found those girls in a bad way. Social services was going to split them up unless I took them all.” He gave just the barest of details, not wanting to relive that terrible time undercover in that drug lord’s inner circle.

She nodded, seeming to have a good sense of discretion. “Nux and Slit were in the same home, abused and neglected. Didn’t officially adopt them until Nux got real sick and had to rush that through so I could make medical decisions.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Been there.” He has. The girls had trouble adjusting at first, and the adoption process had been long and difficult.

She almost says something but the thudding on the stairs alerts them to the sleepy teenager in their midst. Furiosa got up and walked over, checked the boy’s temperature without a fuss and nudged him towards the kitchen.

Max watched the kid shuffle into the chair that Furiosa vacated and sat slouched forward, his eyes staring at the grain lines in the scratched wood of the table. He heard the rattle of pills in bottles and Furiosa set several orange bottles down in front of the kid.

Some sort of muscle memory must have awoken, since the kid easily popped all the childproof caps and counted out an assortment of candy colored pills and swept them into a neat pile. The lids were closed and the bottles arranged exactly so just in time for Furiosa to set a large glass down on the table. Max looked away, not wanting to watch the kid down what looked like enough drugs to make a small-time dealer rolling in cash.

“Officer Rockatansky brought over his daughter’s bike. You want to look at it now?” Furiosa asked and affectionately rubbed Nux’s head. He leaned against her for a long moment, then nodded.

The teenager got up and headed out to the garage to fix the damage he caused. Max watched him shuffle out the door. 

“What-” He started to ask.

“They’re still not really sure what’s wrong with him.” She started to clean up the coffee mugs. “Just managing the symptoms now. Had to start home schooling him because he missed so many days. And that makes it hard on Slit and he doesn’t deal with it in the healthiest of ways.”

He nodded, mulling that over. “I’ll make sure my girls don’t start spreading any more rumors.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” She looked out the window and into the garage. “I’ll make sure that the bike gets done and back to you later.”

He stood up. “Thanks. Cheedo will appreciate it.” Later in the day, after the bus dropped the kids off, he watched Nux carefully hand the bike over to Cheedo while smiling a little too brightly at Capable. 

Now that was something he was going to have to keep an eye on. So far his girls had been good about relationships. There’s been one or two dates, but nothing serious. But now that they were all reaching that age, he might have to dust off his shotgun.


	2. Bored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux curled up on the couch and waited for Slit to get home from track practice. He hated waiting around for Slit to come home from school. It made the days pass by agonizingly slow. At least when he was in school, he had something to do all day. He’d already finished all his schoolwork for the day and spent the rest of the time sleeping for lack of anything interesting to do.
> 
> Furiosa wasn’t even home, she wouldn’t be back from her run for a few days. He sighed and stepped outside, a walk would break up the monotony. He sent a quick text to Slit to let him know what he was doing and headed down the sidewalk. 
> 
> “Hey!”
> 
> He stopped and turned towards the person shouting and saw a redhead waving at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some Nux because I'm so obsessed with him! And Capable! And them together.

Nux curled up on the couch and waited for Slit to get home from track practice. He hated waiting around for Slit to come home from school. It made the days pass by agonizingly slow. At least when he was in school, he had something to do all day. He’d already finished all his schoolwork for the day and spent the rest of the time sleeping for lack of anything interesting to do.

Furiosa wasn’t even home, she wouldn’t be back from her run for a few days. He sighed and stepped outside, a walk would break up the monotony. He sent a quick text to Slit to let him know what he was doing and headed down the sidewalk. 

“Hey!”

He stopped and turned towards the person shouting and saw a redhead waving at him. Cheedo’s older sister. He smiled a little, then glanced down, making sure he was dressed in decent clothes. “Hi.”

“Hey. Uh. Do you have a car?” She nervously twisted the end of one of her braids, looking up at him. Even with him slouched over, he still practically towered over her.

“Yeah. Do you need a ride someplace?” His car was a little bit of a work in progress, but it ran fine. It just looked a little rough since he hadn’t felt up to doing the body work needed to make it shine.

“My sister’s stranded at the mall with a flat tire. Could you drive me over there so I can wait with her until our Dad gets off of work?” 

“No spare?” How did anyone not know how to change a tire? It seemed as basic as multiplication. But he was practically raised in a garage, so maybe it was unrealistic to believe that everyone knew how to take care of a car.

“I honestly don’t know.” He tried to hide his feelings on the matter of that too. He couldn’t be too mad though, Capable (that’s what they call her at school, if he remembers right) couldn’t help it if her sister didn’t take care of her own car. It wasn’t Capable’s fault she didn’t get enough information.

“Alright. Come on.” He gestured towards his house and lead her towards the garage. He pulled the cover off the car and patted her affectionately. “Doesn’t have a name yet. Still thinking on a good one.” He got in and backed out so Capable could ride shotgun. 

“She’s nice.” 

Okay so technically he wasn’t supposed to be driving what with all the medication he’s on but the mall wasn’t too far away and he felt just fine. He’d be back long before Slit got home.

“Thanks for doing this, Nux.” She turned her bright smile on him and he thought he was going to faint for a minute.

“It’s no problem. See? We’re already here. Where’s your sister parked?” He took a calming breath while Capable checked her phone and drove around until he saw Angharad standing beside the old Ford Taurus that she started driving once got an afterschool job.

He parked next to her and got out to examine the flat. “I see what happened. You ran over a nail.”

The sisters’ idle chatter stopped as they both turned to him.

“Uh, you got a spare? I can change it out for you?”

The tall blonde looked at her sister, then back to him. “It’s just the little donut tire. It doesn’t seem like it’ll fit.”

“It’ll hold you until you get home. Pop the trunk?” He slid his fingers under the lip of the trunk, waiting for the girls to let him be helpful.

Capable nodded and Angharad reached into the front seat to pop open the trunk. He pulled out the jack and spare and set to work. His phone buzzed when he was almost through and he ignored Slit’s texts while he was tightening the lug nuts. When he stood up to put the tire in the trunk, he started coughing. It was the embarrassing sort of cough that shook his insides loose and made him loose his breath, causing his vision to darken at the edges. He fumbled, digging for the stupid inhaler he had to carry around and heard it clatter to the ground.

Two sets of hands touched him, eased him down on the ground, leaning up against Angharad’s car. He wasn’t sure which one pressed the inhaler back in his hand. The bitter taste and ease of his chest helped him settle down and he sat for a long, awkward moment with two concerned sets of eyes on him. 

Angharad stood first, bending to lift the tire he dropped. “I can do it.” She hefted it into the trunk.

“Are you okay?” Capable still had her hand on his shoulder. 

“Yeah. I should get going. Slit’s texted me and I didn’t answer back.” He pulled his phone from his pocket to let Slit know he was alive and on his way back.

The girls finished loading the rest of the tools into the car.

“Thank you. I guess I could have done that myself but, I didn’t know how.” Angharad gave him a quick nod and smoothed out her uniform.

“Wasn’t any trouble. I’m sure you’ll get it next time.” He stood and headed towards his own car.

“Um hey,” Capable jogged over to stand between him and his car. “What’s your number?”

He rattled off his phone number without thinking and his phone buzzed in hand. A girl asked for his number. A real girl. A pretty girl! He must be hallucinating or something. He remembers smiling but doesn’t remember the drive home.

“Jesus Nux! You scared the shit out of me! You’re not supposed to be driving.” He let Slit lead him inside and shove him down on the couch.

“It was sort of a damsel in distress thing. I couldn’t not help.” He kicked his shoes off. “I got Capable’s number.”

“The red head next door with the crazy sisters and the cop father?” Slit seemed torn between a joke and an insult. Instead he just shook his head. “What do you want for dinner?”

“I dunno. What’re we ordering?”

Slit elbowed him in the side and he started coughing, but not the same kind as earlier. He was glad Slit didn’t apologize. “Smart ass. Could do pizza again. Or we could get fast food. Or we could attempt eating the food Val brought over.”

“Noo… not Val’s mystery casserole! You are trying to kill me.” Val, their mother’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, looked in on them sometimes when Furiosa was on long runs. She was a terrible cook even though she’s been trying at it for years.

They both laughed and Slit ordered a pizza.

“Nux! Wake up!” Slit shook him awake, a plate with two slices in hand. 

“Was I actually asleep or just spaced out?” He took his dinner and watched his brother sit down beside him.

“Couldn’t tell. I don’t actually watch you all the time you know.” Slit turned on a football game and started eating. “The red-head, huh? Didn’t know that was your type.”

“She’s not a type. She’s nice. And pretty. And… she talks to me.” Being stuck at home all the time didn’t lend itself for meeting girls, so Nux was going to take what he could get. Not that he wasn’t happy with just Slit and Furiosa in his life, but there’s some things that just can’t be done with a brother and a mother.

Slit laughed and wrapped an arm around Nux’s shoulders. Nux set his empty plate on the coffee table and leaned up against Slit’s side, resting his head on his elder brother’s shoulder. “I won’t make fun of you too bad. Those Rockatansky sisters are hot. Except Toast. She’s a bitch.”

He snaked his arms around Slit, glad that they weren’t too old or manly for cuddling, even if neither of them would do this if there was even a hint of other people in the house. When they were children, before Furiosa came into their lives and rescued them, they spent most nights together huddled together for warmth and comfort. It was a hard habit to break and sometimes they would gravitate towards each other anyway, despite the fact that it might give other people the wrong idea.

Like last year, when idiot football player and senior Rick Moore spread all those rumors of them being gay. It caused them and their mom hell trying to convince all the teachers the principal, the PTA and the guidance counselor that there wasn’t anything funny going on between them. Thankfully it eventually blew over and most of the kids at school forgot about it when Rick graduated even though he should have been sent back to the third grade.

His phone rang in his pocket and he answered it, flicking it on speaker when he sees it is their mother.

“Hi Mom,” Nux held the phone between them. They didn’t use the m-word lightly, reserving it for when Furiosa was on the road or when they needed the united front.

“Hey guys. Is the house on fire?” It had only been on fire that one time. And they’d learned their lesson.

“No. We got pizza,” Slit answered. 

“Didn’t want to go to the ER because of Val’s terrible cooking.” 

She laughed but sounded tired. “I don’t blame you. How was school, Slit?”

“Not terrible. Almost got in a fight with Toast Rockatansky. She’s like… the track bitch. She thinks she can just boss everyone around because she’s a girl and she’s loud.” Slit and Toast have been rivals since the girls moved in across the street. They took an instant dislike of each other and everyone had bets that they’d either kill each other or end up married one day. Nux liked to keep that observation to himself.

“Just try to keep your temper under control. Don’t want to piss of her cop father.”

“Yeah, yeah. She’d have to hit me first.” Slit grumbled.

“How’re you feeling Nux? Anything to report?” Nux had the bad habit of leaving out seemingly important details about his health. He didn’t think it was always important to detail how nauseous he was or which gardening tool seemed to be jammed into his skull.

“Slept a lot today because there’s nothing to do. Some coughing. Inhaler helped, so I guess I’m stuck with that one.” He knew he made a face because Slit squeezed his shoulders a little.

“As long as it helps. Alright guys, I’m going to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Night Mom.” They both said as Nux ended the call.

“Thanks for not telling her about the driving.” Nux muttered, sitting up and stretching. It was only ten at night, and he was tired again. “Going to bed.”

“Night,” Slit called after him as he headed upstairs to his room. He just settled into bed when his phone buzzed with a new text message.

“Hey. It’s Capable.”

He smiled. He thought she was just being nice, but now it seemed she was actually sort of interested. “Hi Capable. What are you up to?”

“Nothing. Just bored.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Metal. Anything with lots of loud guitars.” As soon as he sent it, he regretted it. Capable probably didn’t like metal.

“Cool. I like anything you can dance to.” He breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t turned her off completely.

“My friend and his band are playing a show this weekend. Do you want to come?” He closed his eyes, not sure if he was ready for the rejection.

“Where and what time? Who else is going?”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Friday night at the fire hall. Slit and I are going.” He realized that Slit wasn’t usually a ‘pro’ for many lists so he added something to hopefully put her at ease. “It’s an underage show so no booze.” 

“I’ll see what I can do.” A happy emoji followed and he pinched his arm to make sure he hadn’t just dreamt that exchange. 

A date. He might be going on a date with Capable!


	3. Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and sent another text to Nux. “He said he’d think about it. That usually means no.” 
> 
> “Why would you want to go to one of those concerts anyway? I hear it’s just all noise.” Toast stood in her doorway, arms crossed.
> 
> “I want to see what it’s all about.” She sat up, facing her sister.
> 
> “You just want to get with Nux."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I raised the rating to Teen and up because of fighting and swearing. It might go up again later, but I haven't decided yet.

“So can I go?” Capable pleaded with her father. Max usually gave in sooner when she asked for something but maybe her request was a little too unreasonable. “It’s at the fire hall. A bunch of kids from school are going.”

“Who’s supervising?” Max leveled his best “dad glare” at her. 

“The father of the guitarist. He’s a mechanic that works with Ms. Jobassa. Slit and Nux will be there.” She knew her chance was slipping away, she had to think of something.

“I don’t know. Let me think about it and I’ll tell you tomorrow.” It had a tone of finality to it though, so she’s pretty sure the answer is ‘no’. She headed back up to her room and flung herself on the bed with a sigh.

It was hard to be mad when she could absolutely see her father’s side of things. He agreed to become her guardian and because of that, he had the right to tell her no from time to time. Especially when she wasn’t even too sure of the safety of such a concert. 

She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and sent another text to Nux. “He said he’d think about it. That usually means no.” 

“Why would you want to go to one of those concerts anyway? I hear it’s just all noise.” Toast stood in her doorway, arms crossed.

“I want to see what it’s all about.” She sat up, facing her sister.

“You just want to get with Nux. I didn’t think skeletons were your type.” Toast dropped down on her own bed. With six people in the house, it was necessary to share rooms. Capable and Toast shared. Dag and Cheedo shared. Angharad occupied the small attic room and Max converted the den into a small bedroom on the ground floor.

“That’s rude Toast. Besides he’s sweet. He didn’t have to help Angharad with her car.” She sighed and looked at her phone. No new messages. 

“Slit’s just such a jackass it’s hard to imagine that his brother isn’t. At track he was all like… ‘look at me I’m so manly!’ so I had to put him in his place.” Toast rummaged through her backpack and pulled out her calculus textbook.

“What did he do?” She rolled onto her back, looking up at the posters they hung on the ceiling.

“He took his shirt off and it was all like on display. I wanted to shake him like… yeah you’ve got muscles and you know how to use them but nobody wants to see your stupid scars.” Toast opened the book to the chapter she was studying.

“Maybe he’s just comfortable with his body?” She reasoned and sat up to find her own homework. “Were the other guys taking their shirts off?”

“Well yeah. But that’s not the point. Slit was just so… ugh. It’s the way he walks. Like some kind of lizard.”

Capable abandons her history essay to grab her phone when it buzzes.

“Sorry your dad said no. Maybe next time.” 

She keyed in her reply. “Maybe we can hang out at the mall Saturday afternoon?”

“Okay. Meet at the food court?” 

She had a date with Nux. An actual date. Not some strange group concert. And her father couldn’t tell her she couldn’t hang out at the mall during the day. 

The rest of the week passed agonizingly slow. She made sure she had all her homework finished and her chores were done. She caught a ride to the mall with Angharad, who had new tires on her car now. She checked her hair in the mirror once more before heading into the mall.

She saw Nux sitting at one of the empty tables, dressed in an oversized hoodie and jeans. She took a deep breath and headed over to his table. “Hey.”

He nearly tripped over the chair as he stood up. “Capable! Hey.” He grinned. “So uh, what do you want to do?”

She shrugged. She’d never been on a date before. “Anything you want to look at?”

“Have you eaten?” He glanced over at the brightly colored signs along the edges of the food court.

“No.” She shook her head and they browsed the food selection. They settled on a sandwich place and sat together in front of it with their trays. “How was the concert?”

“It was amazing. So loud. Sorry if I’m shouting. I’m not shouting am I?” He grinned at her.

“No.” She laughs and shakes her head. “Sorry I missed it.”

“Nah, it’s alright. Your Dad said no. I’m just glad he didn’t say no to this. I guess it’s kind of better for me. I can actually hear you talk here.” He pulled a few things out of his cargo pants. A CD in the envelope was slid over. “Here. I recorded it off the sound board. So you have an idea of what it was like.” 

“Thanks.” She picked up the CD and looked at the blocky printing of the track list. She almost missed the handful of pills but chose to ignore it. If he didn’t mention it, she wasn’t going to. “I’ll listen to it later.”

He nods and downed half of his soda and started eating his hoagie. “If you like it, I’ll burn you some more of Coma’s stuff.”

They talked about stupid things. She brought up how math confused her and he offered to tutor her. “Are you going to come back to school?”

“Ah, not this year at least. It’s uh… still kind of… up in the air about next year.” He finished a little awkwardly.

“I’m sorry. If you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind. People usually don’t ask about it.” He leaned back in the food court chair, seemingly brimming with excess energy.

She stood up with her tray. “Are you and Slit brothers? Like… real brothers?”

He followed her to dump his trash. “We don’t know. Did a test once. We’re either half-brothers or cousins. Matched up enough but not quite. Doesn’t really matter though. We’ve been together since before we could remember.” He stacked his tray on top, then took hers to do the same. “What about you and your sisters? Are any of you… you know… blood related?”

“Can’t you tell? Toast and I are twins!” She grinned then felt bad at the look on his face. She confused him good. “That was a joke. No, no, none of us are.”

He relaxed a little and smiled nervously. “Oh. Well, I mean… sorry. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

She shook her head. “No.” She struggled with something to talk about, unsure if he would like anything she had to say. What were here hobbies? Stargazing and romance novels but that seemed so… childish or… silly. 

“Oh no.” She heard Nux mumble and looks ahead of them. Her heart sinks as she sees Rick Moore, former football start of the school and his idiot cronies. For a moment, she thought they might get away but Rick already locked eyes on them.

“Well well well, if it isn’t Jack Skellington and Sally uh...” Rick fumbled for a name.

“The girl didn’t have a last name, Rick.” One of the football players supplied.

“Real original, Rick. We’re leaving now.” Nux took her hand and gently tugged her along, trying to move past. Rick put his hand on Nux’s chest, gripping his t-shirt in an iron grip.

“You don’t leave unless I tell you to, Skeleton Boy. Why don’t you leave the girl with us and go back to the Halloween store?” He laughed, thinking his jokes were funny.

Nux stepped in front of her, standing to his full height, which was still several inches shorter than Rick. “No.”

Rick roared. Actually roared and pulled his fist back to punch Nux, but Nux pushed her backwards and scrambled to the left. She stumbled but took the hint and backed off out of the way. Nux was already behind Rick, moving faster than the big brute.

Rick turned, swinging again and this time his giant fist connected with Nux’s ribs, doubling him over and gasping for breath as the wind was literally knocked out of him. Rick laughed and bent over as Nux gasped and wheezed for air. Nux reeled back, then smashed his head into Rictus’s nose.

The older boy yelled and his buddies jumped on Nux, tackling him to the ground and landing several punches and kicks. 

She ran forward. “STOP IT! STOP IT!” She had her hand on her phone, “Stop now or I’ll call the cops!” She started dialing her father’s work number, knowing he’d come right away and that if this wasn’t going to scare the thugs, a 911 call wouldn’t be fast enough.

The boys stopped, they weren’t sure if they could deal with being arrested and Rick was too occupied with his bloody nose. One of them tugged Rick away and Capable rushed to Nux’s side. He still gasped for air like a fish, his eyes wide and unfocused. She rummaged in the pockets of his cargo pants and finds his inhaler, pressing it into his hand.

Muscle memory drew his hand up to his face and he took two puffs of the inhaler and coughed. She helped him sit up slowly. “Are you okay? Do you need a hospital?”

“N-no… ‘m fine.” He groaned a little when she helped him up.

“Let’s get you home. Should I call someone?” She pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at the cut above his eye.

“Mom’s out of town on a run. Slit’s at a track meet an hour away.” He sat on the edge of the dry fountain to collect himself. “Dunno if I can drive right now.”

“Angharad’s still working.” She frowned. Now she wished she took her father up on driving lessons to get her license. But until now she hadn’t really needed to know how to drive. 

“You could drive my car.” His blue eyes focused on her and she thought she might drown in them.

“I don’t know how.” She squeaked.

“It’s not hard. I’ll talk you through it.” He coughed again and stood up, swaying a little until she pulled his arm over her shoulder. 

“If you’re sure.” She trusted him and she didn’t want to leave him until they could find someone to bring them home.

The drive home was frightening. Not only did she expect to be pulled over and arrested for driving without a license, Nux’s car was a manual and took all her concentration to figure out. It didn’t help that he got very cranky whenever she ground the gears or stalled out. It was a very long three miles.

Once they got to Nux’s house, she helped him inside. He directed her to the extensively large first aid kit. By the time she got back from the bathroom, he already had his shirt off. She could see the smattering of bruises along his stomach and chest, despite the large… tattoo? She stared a little longer than necessary at the tattoo that spanned his chest. She shook herself out of the spell and sat down with him. “What do you need me to do?”

“Thing that asshole bruised a rib or two. Hurts.” He opened the first aid kit and pulled out a wide ace bandage.

This was something she was familiar with. She’d had to wrap her father’s ribs a time or two. She carefully wrapped the bandage around him. “You’re bruised all over.”

“Yeah. That happens. I touch my shin against the coffee table and I’m bruised.” He sat still with his eyes closed.

Once she bandaged his ribs, she took care of the cuts on his face and then helped him put his shirt back on. “You sure know how to make a date memorable.”

He grinned. “Sorry. I hate that guy. He’s always spreading shit just because his father owns half the town.”

“It’s okay. You were amazing. You stood up to him and got in a good shot. I think you broke his nose. How’s your head?”

“Hurts but not more than usual. Would um… would you mind hanging out until Slit comes home?” He asked sheepishly. “We can watch a movie.”

She smiled. “Sure. I’d like that.”


	4. Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slit both loves and hates his chosen sport. He loves the power of hurling the javelin farther than everyone else on the team. He enjoys the freedom of running and the way he doesn’t have to think when it’s just the wind in his face. He doesn’t even mind the guys on the team, Mikey Morsov has been his and Nux’s friend since they started in middle school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some Slit. Angry little rage puppy.

Slit both loves and hates his chosen sport. He loves the power of hurling the javelin farther than everyone else on the team. He enjoys the freedom of running and the way he doesn’t have to think when it’s just the wind in his face. He doesn’t even mind the guys on the team, Mikey Morsov has been his and Nux’s friend since they started in middle school. But the fact that the girls’ team has to share practice times, coaches and busses made Slit’s skin crawl. 

He knew that he’ll probably never get a girlfriend. He knew that ever since his drunken biological mother decided to force a smile upon his face with a kitchen knife, he would never group up to be a respectable young man. He wasn’t smart like Nux. And sports were the only things he was good at. 

He tried out for football and liked it well enough, but once Nux got sick, Slit felt that he needed to keep himself healthy and injury-free in case his brother needed some kind of transplant. Slit would give Nux his right arm if it meant his brother got well again. Not that he’d ever admit it to anyone but Nux and maybe Furiosa. The whole idea that an entire team of doctors couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with his brother ate at him. It felt like they were holding back something. Something important that might keep his brother from wasting away if only they had more money. Better insurance. If they were somehow better than they were. 

But this wasn’t something Slit could change. So he did a lot of running and threw pointy sticks, imagining those patronizing doctors that poked and prodded and drugged Nux and said that they’re so sorry but maybe this time, this next thing will fix him. He’d carve his face up all over again if something would take. 

Morsov passed him a bottle of water as they waited around for the girl’s relay to end. He tried to get the coach to let him drive himself so he could leave early, so he and Morsov could find Nux and maybe Coma to hang out. Anything was better than watching Toast Rockatansky break records.

He still had no idea why Toast hated him so much. If Nux actually started dating Capable (what was she Capable of, he wondered) then maybe he could get an answer. He bit back the rude heckle he wanted to say when Toast lost her lead but that’d just get him benched for the next meet. He’d have to sit there all day and not have anything to do. Sitting still and being bored is torture, so he won’t tempt fate and antagonize Toast.

“Simon, are you coming to get pizza with the team?” One of the coaches asked.

He shook his head. “No. I should get back home to my brother. Our Mom is out of town.” If he has to endure the pity of nearly every teacher in the school he was going to milk the sick brother routine to get him out of the worst situations. 

Miss Giddy, the ancient (as in she’s ancient) world history teacher gave him ‘The Pity Face’ and patted his shoulder in what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture. “Of course, of course. Family is the most important.” She moved off to the next cluster of people.

“Nux is okay, right?” Morsov asked, slightly concerned. 

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to go eat shit pizza. Had pizza last night and the night before. Besides, teambuilding isn’t really gonna work with the way things are.” He gestured towards Toast and the group of girls returning to the benches after the event ended.

“Yeah well, she hates all men. She just hates you more.” Morosov gathered up his stuff.

“Lucky me.” He frowned, grabbed his bag and headed back to the bus.

After a long and miserable bus ride, he was ready to get the hell home when he felt someone behind him. “Hey.”

He took a deep breath and turned around. Toast. “What do you want?”

“Look, I know you hate me, but I need a ride home.” She looked around to make sure no one was around. “Please?”

His mother would kill him if he left anyone stranded at school. “Only if you lay off me for a week.”

“A week? No. It’s not that far. A day.” She crossed her arms and tried to stand taller than her five feet, two inches.

“Three days. Starting Monday.” He held firm.

“Fine.” 

He smirked even though it pulled his mouth in odd ways and unlocked the car. “Get in.”

He waited for her to get in the car and drove off, not caring that the CD player blasted one of Coma’s demos through the aftermarket speaker system. There was five minutes of metal bliss before Toast turned the radio down to a sane level. 

“Don’t touch my radio.” He glared at her when they got to a stop light.

“You’ll lose your hearing listening to it that loud.” She glared back at him.

“I’m mostly deaf on the left side, I gotta turn it up loud so I can hear it.” He stared straight ahead and drove.

“Seriously?” She seemed skeptical. Like he’d lie about something stupid like that.

“Yeah. Old Man cupped his hand like this and bashed me in the ear real hard.” He wasn’t sure why he even bothered to tell her.

“Why?” He almost thinks he imagined her say it then she turns the radio down again.

“Hell if I know. Didn’t ask for a reason back then.” The question unsettled him, his face hurt in ways that it hadn’t hurt in a long time.

Thankfully she stopped asking questions after that. When he pulled down the lane, he curses. “That asshole! I told him.” He parked on the street, forgetting about Toast and left his gear in the back. He looked over Nux’s car parked in the driveway instead of the garage and stalked inside.

“Nux! The hell do you think you’re doing?” He stomped his way to the living room, totally unprepared for the sight he saw.

Nux laying on the couch, his head in Capable’s lap, with a black eye and bruises all over his arms. “Hey Slit.”

His eyes flicked to the red head, who seemed frozen still, but held onto Nux protectively.

“What happened? Don’t lie, I know you were driving when you’re not supposed to.” He didn’t notice Toast follow him in, his bag in hand. This day was just more surreal.

Nux sat up, supported by Capable. “Rick Moore. I just went to the mall to hang out with Capable, since she couldn’t go to the concert. Rick was there, tried to hassle her. Bruised me up but I broke his nose.”

Toast snorted. “Finally somebody stood up to that creep.”

“What are you doing here?” Capable asked her sister, obviously confused.

“Slit gave me a ride home from track. Dad’s working overtime.” She looked around the living room.

Slit clenched his fists, he wanted to hit something, but he wouldn’t give Toast another excuse to tell him how much he sucks. He took a deep breath and counted to ten. That’s what that therapist said. Then he let it out slowly. “Fine. Fine.” 

Capable got up and kissed Nux on the head, then made some excuse to drag Toast out of the house. 

“Sorry. I’m just… so tired of not being able to do anything.” Nux sighed, slumping down against the couch after the girls left.

Slit sighed, rubbing one of his cheeks with his hand. “Yeah, yeah I know. You take meds yet?”

“No. Val called though, she’s bringing over fried chicken. Go take a shower, I’ll be fine.” Nux waved him off.

When Slit came back down, he let Nux lean up against him. “Val’s going to lose her shit on you.”

“I know.” Val was a registered nurse and while she usually fussed less than most aults over Nux’s wellbeing, she was the one that actually had valid opinions on such things. If one has trouble breathing, one does not pick fights with assholes that kick one’s ribs in.

“Mom will know too. About the fight and the driving.”

“I know.” Came Nux’s pitiful whine. “I can’t help it. Capable… she’s special.”

“You two didn’t do anything I should know about, did you?” He knew that Nux would never move so fast. 

“What? Ew, no! First off, we technically just met. Two, her father is a cop. Three, I can barely breathe so getting it on with Capable would be pretty damn hard.” He frowned.

“Yeah, yeah, alright.” Slit sat down and waited for Val to show up while Nux dozed.

“Food!” Val barreled through the door with all the subtlety and finesse of a cop looking for drugs. Nux started awake but smiled when he saw who was here.

Slit stepped away from his injured brother and took the fried chicken and fixings to the counter to avoid the wrath of Val.

“What the hell happened to you?” 

Slit smirked and got some plates and silverware, listening to Nux get verbally shredded by the woman that had been a somewhat mother figure for them the past couple years. She stepped in and helped them out whenever their mom was on a run or needed help with appointments or just general support. They all needed the support once Nux got sick. But now Slit was happily listening to him get scolded by a former army nurse on why it is such a bad idea to pick fights with groups of idiots. He waited just a moment before heading back to the room, going to save the day.

“Aww Val, leave him alone. He got a girlfriend out of it, right?” He grinned, ignored the way it pulled his mangled face in weird places.

Val’s face changed, softened a little bit and she shook her head. “Yeah? Well it’s about time. Now come on and eat before it’s cold.”

The three chatted amiably, Val sharing some horror stories from the ER she worked at. It was turning out to be a pretty good day. Slit even let Nux pick something to watch until they were both too tired to go to bed.

He woke with a stiff neck and pushed Nux off him, swearing the whole time that the evil couch tried to murder him in his sleep. He’s not sure how his brother can stand the lumpy mess. He heard someone in the kitchen and crept towards the door, relaxing only when he sees Furiosa there, standing in her tank top and flannel pants fixing breakfast.

“Didn’t hear you get in last night.” He says quietly even though he knows that Nux could probably sleep through a metal concert.

“It was more like this morning.” She passed him a mug for some coffee and turned back to her task of scrambling eggs one-handed.

He got them each a cup of coffee and started making toast. “Nux got in a fight, but he’s okay. Val checked him over.”

“She called me last night. I’m not surprised.” She took the eggs off the stove. “I’m not happy either. But I’m glad you boys know how to defend yourselves.”

He nodded and sat down to eat, knowing that she ended her run earlier than planned because she was worried. 

“How was the track meet?”

“Went fine. I swear they get longer and longer. Almost broke a record. Would have too if the smeg field was more even.” He continued to tell her about the details he felt were the most interesting. 

He looked over when Nux shuffled into the room, but looked away when he thought he saw a skeleton. How much weight was too much to lose? Had Nux looked like that yesterday? How hadn’t ne noticed this? He glanced at their mother, who hid her concern well enough. He finished his breakfast.

“Going out with Morsov today, got a project to work on for school.” He didn’t, but the lie was accepted. He showered and changed clothes and went out to his car.

He found himself at the school track, running laps until he couldn’t feel anymore. That’s not true though. Even when his chest burned and his legs felt like jelly, he still felt angry.


	5. Social Interaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa hated these track booster meetings but she found them useful to make sure that the other parents didn’t think her son was some kind of monster. She didn’t need another incident where the school calls in child protection services on her and she has to reign herself in and make sure the boys stay out of trouble. 
> 
> She wandered over to the snack table, ignoring the proposed decorations for the upcoming sports banquet and picked through the cookies, looking for Miss Giddy’s lemon squares. It’s there that she sees Officer Rockatansky… Max there, still in uniform, doing his best to pay attention to the droning. She caught his attention with a nod and gestured him over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter. Life got busy all of a sudden. I haven't abandoned this fic, just progress on it slowed down a whole lot.

Furiosa hated these track booster meetings but she found them useful to make sure that the other parents didn’t think her son was some kind of monster. She didn’t need another incident where the school calls in child protection services on her and she has to reign herself in and make sure the boys stay out of trouble. 

She wandered over to the snack table, ignoring the proposed decorations for the upcoming sports banquet and picked through the cookies, looking for Miss Giddy’s lemon squares. It’s there that she sees Officer Rockatansky… Max there, still in uniform, doing his best to pay attention to the droning. She caught his attention with a nod and gestured him over.

“Don’t listen to them, you’ll want to shoot them.” She whispered.

He gave her a slight nod and tight smile, but still kept most of his attention on the speaker.

“I don’t usually see you at these things.” She filled her plate with a little of everything.

“Was guilted into it.” His eyes shifted over to her and quickly back on the speaker. “Toast said she’d be kicked off the team if I didn’t come.”

“Yeah, they won’t actually do that but it’s useful to show up just in case there’s a problem.” She nodded to the woman speaking. “The only thing you really have to do is sell some raffle tickets or work in the concession stand during a meet.”

She almost laughed at the face he made. “Just sell all your raffle tickets and you won’t get stuck selling sodas to bored parents.”

“It shouldn’t be much longer.” She gave him a small smile and offered him a lemon square, which he took with only slight suspicion.

“How’s… Nux doing?” He asked after a careful bite of the cookie. 

“Some days are better than others, but he’s been doing better since he’s been seeing Capable.” She studied his muted reaction curiously, wondering how he was able to keep up with five girls where she often had trouble keeping up with her two boys. 

“I didn’t think it was that serious.” He frowned. “I don’t know if I’m prepared for any of them to be dating yet.”

“I know. They grow up so fast.” She remembered the day she first saw the two street waifs hanging around the shop where her former gang operated out of. “Hey, we’re having a barbeque next weekend. Why don’t you and your girls come by? I think Nux already invited Capable.”

“What’s the occasion?” He asked after taking a sip of ‘orange drink’ from a plastic cup.

She glanced to the other parents in the room and then to Max. “We don’t really celebrate birthdays, just the day we became a family.” It seemed cheesy telling it out loud to a stranger, but how else could she really say that the place they came from did a number on her boys, twisting their beliefs around their former leader. But she didn’t want to give the man the wrong impression.

“Sounds… like fun.” He said in a halting sentence. “The girls would like it.”

Social obligations over, she drove home glad to spend the evening helping the boys with their homework and watching television with them. She didn’t have to be back on the road for two days, then would be back just in time to get ready to have everyone over.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go to plan. They never did. The day before she was set to leave, Nux developed a fever that spiked too high for too long and ended up being admitted to the hospital. She cancelled her run and camped out in the hospital waiting room, living off vending machine fare and stale coffee. Slit tried to skip school to wait with her but she put her foot down, at least for now.

She made her way back from her latest coffee run and reclaimed her chair beside her son. So far the fever was going down slowly but not slow enough to get discharged yet. She sighed and kicked her shoes off then propped her feet up on the edge of the bed. Nux had some trouble breathing so they put him on oxygen. She didn’t like the dark circles under his eyes or the grayish tone to his skin, but the nurses assured her he was doing better. She sighed and closed her eyes. Just a quick nap while Nux was still asleep.

“Mom?”

She cracked one eye open. “Yeah?”

Nux shuffled around in the bed, fidgeting with the hospital blanket. “Any chance of getting out soon?”

“Not yet. They’re thinking pneumonia this time.” She shifted a little and reached out with her flesh hand and pressed her fingers to his forehead.

“Fucking compromised immune system. I knew those meds would screw me up more.” He sighed and rolled on his side without getting tangled in tubes and monitors. As a last ditch effort to try to figure out what was wrong with him, Nux’s doctor put him on some Immunosuppressive drugs. He seemed to be doing better, until he passed out halfway down the stairs.

“Before this you felt better though, right?” She stood up and started straightening Nux’s blankets.

“Little bit.” He grumbled and coughed.

“Hey, in all the excitement, I forgot to tell you that I invited Max and his family to our party.” She stopped fussing and sat back down, rolling her shoulders. Her prosthetic was starting to dig into her shoulder.

“Max?” Nux’s blue eyes blinked and tried to focus on her. 

“Capable’s father. His name is Max.” She smiled a little and reached under her hoodie to unstrap her arm.

“Ohhh. Please don’t date him.” He sat up, wheezed, coughed and then gestured her closer.

She chuckled and stepped closer to the bed. “Oh? Why not? He is kind of cute. In that sort of scruffy way.” 

Nux’s fingers shook a little, but he got the tricky straps undone for her in much less time than she could do with one hand. “Ugh. First off, Val is awesome. And if I’m dating Capable, you can’t date her dad. What if you two got married? Then Capable and I would be brother and sister and it’d be really awkward.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to switch teams on you.” She shrugged off her hoodie and her bulky arm and sat back down in the chair dressed only in her tank top. “Oh, I charged your phone while you were sleeping. You missed a million texts from Capable.”

Nux’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t read them, did you?”

“Only until it felt like my teeth were going to rot out.” She passed him his cell phone and watched as he coughed a little before scrolling through the texts. Honestly, she only replied to Capable when the texts got a little desperate, letting Capable know that Nux was okay and in the hospital and his room number if she wanted to visit.

He only managed a few minutes before his eyes grew heavy and he leaned back against the pillows. “Tired.” He coughed again and pulled at the blanket. “When’s Slit coming?”

“I made him go to school, but he’s skipping practice.” She put her feet back up on the edge of the bed as Nux closed his eyes.

The next few days were much the same until Nux was released. She had just enough time to get the party put together. It was a bit of a rush job, since she had to make sure Nux was taking his meds and everything was still fine with work and Slit was still okay. 

Furiosa leaned over the kitchen sink to make sure the boys were behaving. They were sitting in lawn chairs in the back yard, Nux bundled up despite it still being warm. Morsov and Coma had come over early, the former bringing a tray of cookies from his grandmother, the latter with an acoustic guitar. She pulled herself away from the scene, mostly so Val doesn’t make fun of how much of a sap she’s become over the last few years.

“Boss!” A shout from the front indicated that Ace, her best friend and the best truck mechanic in the state, was ready to unload his truck full of tables, chairs, coolers full of ice and beverages. 

She left the house and started directing traffic to the back yard. Soon there were enough seats for at least fifty people. She wasn’t sure if she even knew fifty people, but still, it was nice. 

“Looks like one hell of a party!” Val carried out a tray of burgers, hot dogs and steaks and set them on a table next to the massive grill that Ace was getting started.

“Hopefully we don’t get the cops called on us this year.” Ace grumbled as he wiped his hands on a shop cloth he always has on him.

“Uh oh, looks like one’s early.” Val frowned, seeing Max walk up uncertainly. 

“Hey Max,” Furiosa called out, beckoning him over. Once the gate opened, she noticed he was being followed by his two youngest, each carrying a covered dish. 

He nodded and came over. “Brought pasta salad and… a quinoa thing. Dag and Angharad don’t eat meat.” The pale blonde frowned at the plate of raw meat nearby.

“That’s alright, we have a couple other vegetarians coming. We’ve got a smaller grill for tofu dogs and bean burgers.” Val smiled at the girls. “I’m Val. You girls wan to come with me to help set up the buffet table?”

The girls looked up at Max, who nodded and followed Valkyrie to the food table.

“Val, she’s a nurse. Great with kids.” She watched them a moment then looked back at Max. “Only two today?”

“The other three are still getting ready.” He shrugged and looked over the grill. “Need help?”

“Boss won’t let anyone else cook.” Ace snorted, then held his hand out to Max. “Ace.”

“Max. Rockatansky.” He shook the offered hand and then looked over the people gathered, so far just the boys. 

“If you’re lucky, I’ll let you do the vegetarian stuff. I always mess them up.” She figured he might have more experience by living with vegetarians.

He nodded and saw the smaller grill and started fussing with it. She smiled and let him to it.

She was glad that grill duty kept her away from having to do the usual meet and greet. People from work, teenagers, neighbors and even a couple of the teachers from school showed up. She was eventually pushed away from the grill by Ace, who shoved a plate in hand and towards the growing gathering in the back.

She heard Coma’s guitar and women singing. Seems that she missed Max’s older daughters come by. Capable was curled up in Nux’s lap, smiling and singing some new pop song with Angharad (she assumed) who was perched on her own chair. Coma had relocated to sit on a cooler, bobbing his head to the music as he usually does. Dag sat in the middle of the circle weaving some weeds together. Little Cheedo sat next to Dag but seemed fascinated by Coma’s playing. 

She pulled up a chair and was surprised to see that Slit had also given up his chair to sit in the grass with Morsov. The short dark-skinned girl picking at a slice of cake must be Toast. She listened to the teens chatter about school and music. Cheedo slid closer to Coma, who pretended not to notice.

“Thanks.” Max said, sitting in the chair beside her. “For inviting us. They seem to be having a good time.”

“What about you?” She looked over at him. This was the first time he wasn’t wearing his uniform. He didn’t look as stuffy in his leather jacket and jeans.

“I’m having fun too.” He managed a small smile.

“Good.” She turned back in just enough time to see Slit steal the frosting flower off of Toast’s plate.

“HEY!” She screamed and threw her plate down to catch up to Slit, who was already leaping over Nux and Capable’s legs to get away.

“You scraped it off!” Slit shouted as he ran.

“I was saving it!” She chased after him.

Morsov cackled and seemed to be taking bets. The girls sided with Toast. Nux hesitated, then declared that Slit would prevail. Coma abstained from betting, just started playing some sort of chase music.

“Should we put a stop to it?” She looked over and asked Max, who seemed to be just as amused as the rest.

“No. She probably won’t hit him too hard.”


	6. The Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angharad sighed and carried in the last of the groceries. She had no idea what to make for dinner, but she knew if she had to eat Something Helper one more time this week, she would kill herself. Well, no. That’s not true. She wouldn’t kill herself. 
> 
> She set the reusable bags on the table and tugged down the sleeves of her shirt to hide the telling scars there. Maybe she would just go on a hunger strike. Or just hide some power bars in her room. That’s probably a good idea anyway. Especially when it’s Dag’s turn to cook. As much as she likes to encourage her younger sister to express herself, she wished it didn’t have to be with dinner. Last time the top of the stove nearly caught fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little short because I had difficulty trying to capture Angharad in this modern setting. I hope I did her justice.

Angharad sighed and carried in the last of the groceries. She had no idea what to make for dinner, but she knew if she had to eat Something Helper one more time this week, she would kill herself. Well, no. That’s not true. She wouldn’t kill herself. 

She set the reusable bags on the table and tugged down the sleeves of her shirt to hide the telling scars there. Maybe she would just go on a hunger strike. Or just hide some power bars in her room. That’s probably a good idea anyway. Especially when it’s Dag’s turn to cook. As much as she likes to encourage her younger sister to express herself, she wished it didn’t have to be with dinner. Last time the top of the stove nearly caught fire.

She checked her phone for messages. No texts from Max so she assumed that he was going to be on time for dinner. Toast was at practice but she didn’t need a ride; Slit promised to bring her home. That was different. Angharad put away some of the items she bought and got some chicken from the freezer to defrost as she prepared to make chicken salads for dinner. 

The Jobassas next door were still a mystery to her. She wasn’t sure what there was to like about Slit. He was angry and competitive and everything she hated about men. He reminded her of the men that held them captive. Nux was much easier to like. He was actually sweet underneath the macho veneer, especially when Capable was around. But something about him still unnerved her. His eyes were far too blue to be a man’s eyes.

Speak of the devil; her phone beeped with another text. Capable is going to eat next door. 

Men were, in Angharad’s experience, a very bad idea. Furiosa and Valkyrie have the right idea. The glimpses that she had seen them at the cook out were sweet, but neither of them were sappy or gushing girly idiots like most women on TV. They were both strong and independent and she hoped that one day she could be like that. 

But first she had to finish high school, get into a good college with a scholarship, work through her many issues and find out who she really was. As a young girl, she had dreams of becoming a model or an actress. Her mother encouraged her, based on the bit of money she won in a contest when she was six. She was featured in a series of print ads for a children’s clothing store that’s long been out of business. Max said that was probably how they found her and stole her from her home, forced her into being the child bride of an old man that called himself Immortan. He wore a mask and called himself a god as he collected young girls as his brides. 

It still burned her up inside that after the cops tore their former prison apart, they found no evidence of who he was. The disgusting old man was still out there, fuming over his lost “property”. She couldn’t help but feel that he could still be watching them. Waiting for her or one of her sisters to be alone to snatch them away from the mostly normal life they built with Max.

Angharad turned as the door opened and she smiled at Max as he came in. “You’re on time tonight.”

He nodded and grunted, his usual form of communication. “Was a slow day today. Got lucky.” He left his shoes at the door and hung up his coat on one of the colored hooks on the wall.

“That’s good. Good to have you home for dinner. It’s just you, me, Cheedo and Dag.” She went back to cutting greens for salads. 

“Capable and Toast already let me know they wouldn’t be home.” He stepped into the kitchen and looked around. “Need help?”

She shook her head. “No. I got it.” She liked cooking, it was relaxing and she liked that it made her useful and productive in the house. When she and her sisters first moved in with Max, she feared she’d traded one master for another, but the police officer turned out to be genuine. When he asked if they would like to stay with him, she agreed thinking it would just be temporary. She didn’t expect to become a family. And while she found it hard to see Max as a father-figure, he would always be their protector.

“How’s school? Work?”

“School is fine. Not as much homework as I expected. Work is… not too bad. The car is holding up.” She hated her job, but it was because folding t-shirts and ringing up rude and bratty customers while they buy “designer” clothes that were made overseas by workers that could barely feed themselves.

“Good.” Max was many things, but talkative isn’t one of them. He stretched his bad knee under the table. “Got an appointment coming up?”

She nodded, keeping her eyes on the cooking chicken. “Thursday.”

“Is it helping?”

She had to think, so she took the time to put the slab of tofu into the other pan. “I guess.” Her therapist was trying, really, but losing her baby was just too hard for the teenager to get over. She hadn’t even wanted it at first, but by the time Max rescued them, she’d been looking forward to meeting her son. But the fall she took off the truck nearly killed them both. She woke up three days later and had to be put under again because she’d gone into hysterics over the news that the baby didn’t make it. 

Dinner was served and Angharad tired her best to keep up with Dag’s blow by blow descriptions of the status of her plants and Cheedo’s recap of all her classes. She let the younger girls take over cleaning duty and grabbed a bottle of water to sit on the back porch. A small patch of old trees separated their back yard from the rest of the neighborhood. At night, it sometimes felt like they were the only house for miles. Right now she wished that were the case. She felt… strange. Listless. Depressed. She wanted desperately to move on from her old life, but she felt held back somehow. Stuck.

She closed her eyes and leaned against the side of the house, not bothering to turn her head when she heard Max’s heavy footsteps on the old wood. He walked heavy, purposefully, and sat down on the steps that lead to the yard. She liked that Max didn’t have to look at her to have a conversation. She was content to watch his back as he sipped from the beer bottle in his hand.

“You want to go look at colleges this weekend? State’s not that far up the highway. Couple private collages along the way.”

“I don’t even know what I want to major in yet.” She watched a squirrel flit around in Dag’s little garden.

“Could go undecided and figure it out from there. Money isn’t an issue. There’s the money from the state and the charity stuff and I got enough.”

She didn’t know how Max could afford to feed and house them all on his salary, but she knew he had money from his wife. From when she and his son were killed. They didn’t bring it up. “That seems wasteful though.”

“You want to defer for a year?” He set the brown bottle down on the step beside him.

“I want to travel. See the world. The green places.” She said suddenly, unsure of why she’d confessed such a silly notion to her practical guardian.

He seemed thoughtful for a long moment and then turned to look at her. “Plan an itinerary. I want a route; all the major places you’d hit. You need a way for me to contact you wherever you go. You learn how to protect yourself before you go. Get your passport settled and any paperwork you need. Then… then we’ll make that happen.”

She was stunned. It was the longest sentence she remembers hearing from Max in months. But… he’d just let her run off to the far corners of the world on her own? “You mean it?”

“You need to do the work for it first. You think you can do that?” 

“I’ll make it happen, Max.”

She spent the rest of her weekend sitting at the family computer and looking on travel website for exotic places. Ones untouched by man and full of nature’s beauty. She researched hiking gear, travel fare, camping, where the best places to fly in and out of certain countries. She wasn’t going to waste Max’s promise on a frivolous trip to Paris or Rome. Sure she might stop over in one or the other, but cities didn’t appeal to her. She wanted the freedom to be away from civilization. Only then did she think she could find herself. Learn to function on her own without the shadow of her past looming over her.

“You’re really going to do this?” Capable stood over her shoulder, thumbing through the black and white printouts made on the splotchy inkjet printer.

“I am. There’s a lot of world out there and I’m going to see it.”

“I’m glad.” Capable smiled, brushing Angharad’s hair away from the scars on her forehead. “Just don’t marry a gorilla and live in a treehouse.”

The mood lifted and both girls broke out into hysterical giggles. “That’s so mean, Cape! What if the gorilla is my soulmate?” She wiped tears from her eyes and just barely got the words out.

“Well if he’s your soulmate…”

Toast barged in on them then, looking at them like they’d each grown two heads. “What the hell are you laughing at?”

“The future!” Angharad grinned for what seemed like the first time in years. Finally, she was taking her own fate in her hands and she felt so free. And she was not afraid.


	7. Dumb Party Trick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikey Morsov isn’t sure how the girls ended up at the weekly game night he holds in his grandmother’s basement with the old cracked leather couch and aging plasma TV. Usually it’s just him and Slit, and Nux if he’s not too sick. And Coma if he’s feeling social enough to get out of his house and hang. Tonight all the guys showed up, and with Toast and Capable Rockatansky in tow. It’s obvious that Nux invited Capable, but Toast is a bit of a mystery. Morsov doesn’t have a not-so-secret thing for her like Slit does, in fact, he doesn’t really interact with the Rockatansky sisters much at all. They bother him in a way that he can’t quite put his finger on.

Mikey Morsov isn’t sure how the girls ended up at the weekly game night he holds in his grandmother’s basement with the old cracked leather couch and aging plasma TV. Usually it’s just him and Slit, and Nux if he’s not too sick. And Coma if he’s feeling social enough to get out of his house and hang. Tonight all the guys showed up, and with Toast and Capable Rockatansky in tow. It’s obvious that Nux invited Capable, but Toast is a bit of a mystery. Morsov doesn’t have a not-so-secret thing for her like Slit does, in fact, he doesn’t really interact with the Rockatansky sisters much at all. They bother him in a way that he can’t quite put his finger on. 

But he won’t turn away two hot girls willing to play Mario Kart, especially when they bring a gallon bag of extra crispy (and a little burnt) chocolate chip cookies. Especially when Nux looks like a skeleton with puppy dog eyes. Coma makes himself comfortable on the hammock strung up in the corner. He brought his acoustic around and played since video games are not his friends. Morsov thinks he’d be a lot more annoyed by that if he were blind, but then again, Coma’s never been able to see, so he’s never played a game. He lets that bit of logic settle in and nods, watching Slit and Toast take up most of the couch. Nux sits down on the floor, leaning against Slit’s legs. Capable sits on Nux’s other side. At least Toast left room for Morsov to sit.

Nux drops out of the game first, tossing his controller aside and curling up into his hoodie on the floor beside her. Morsov is out next, getting tired of Slit’s constant abuse. He wants to punch him if he says the word ‘mediocre’ one more time, but instead he opens the ancient refrigerator and pulls out a two-liter bottle of store brand cola that his grandma buys. He grabs a stack of plastic cups from one of the local fast food chains with weird cartoon hot dogs on them and passes them around. 

“Pizza won’t be here till eight when Grandma comes back from her church group.” He reclaimed his spot on the couch just as Slit and Toast finish up their sixth game. If he’s counting right, the two of them are tied.

“You know, when I agreed to come, I thought it’d be… you know… more than this.” Toast said, setting the controller down.

Coma laughed from his perch. “You thought it’d be drinking and wrestling and weed?”

Toast seemed annoyed by being called out. “Well yeah, I mean, that’s what everyone at school seems to think about you guys.”

Sure, when Slit, Nux and Morsov started going to the school three years ago, the other kids thought they were skinheads or a gang. Morsov let his hair grow out since then. Slit and Nux keep their hair short, heads nearly shaved. “Yeah well, maybe you should stop spreading rumors Rockatansky.” Morsov was slightly braver with Slit sitting between him and the feisty girl and her big mouth. He’s pretty sure she’s started most of the annoying rumors and Slit just seems to encourage them.

“I don’t spread rumors!” She set her cup down and crossed her arms.

“Then how did this wild weekly party become some kind of crazy drug and sex thing?” It annoyed Morsov the most because parents see his grandmother and they try to tell her she’s doing a shit job of raising him. The woman’s a saint and doesn’t deserve that treatment, but she doesn’t get angry at them, just tells them to have a nice day, may God bless you and continues on.

“Why don’t you just say something then?” Capable piped up and it’s almost adorable how she thought the truth can change the collective opinion of an entire high school. 

“It’s just better to let them talk. Harmless,” Nux said gently, trying not to offend his girlfriend. “Morsov doesn’t drink ‘cause his grandma will kill him. Coma doesn’t like being disoriented. And I’m on too many meds anyway.”

“What about Slit?” Toast, still pouty from the earlier exchange, seemed to want to shift everything onto Slit. Sure, sometimes everything was really Slit’s fault, but he wasn’t nearly as terrible a person as he liked everyone to believe.

Slit stood and stalked out of the basement. “Gonna go use the can,” he mumbled and stalked up the stairs two at a time like he wanted to stomp the house down.

Nux looked after him helplessly and sighed, sinking further into his hoodie’s hood than before. “Slit’s straight-edge, Toast. Before we were…” Nux trailed off, shrinking some more under Capable’s too concerned gaze. Morsov could see him try to choke off one line of thinking so he doesn’t have to explain how the four boys actually met.

“Slit and Nux are the same blood type.” Thank God for Coma, pulling a thread of truth out of the mess of things they all wanted to keep secret. The blind bastard doesn’t talk much, but he knows a hell of a lot more than he lets on. He went back to plucking his guitar in one of those weird scales and let the girls put two and two together. 

Capable was the one that moved first, wrapping one arm around Nux’s slumped shoulders. She whispered something too low to catch. Toast stood up and marched up the stairs. 

“MIKHAIL!” The basement door opened with his grandmother’s shout. Morsov scrambled to help with the pizza. Coma left his perch and drug his hand along the wall to help. Nux was three steps behind, having left Capable blinking in confusion.

Morsov took the pizzas from his grandmother’s hands. He greeted her in Russian, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. 

“Mikhail, such a good boy. Hello Coma, I have bag for you to take.” She placed the handles of the reusable bag in Coma’s outstretched hand. 

“Thank you, Grandma.” Coma smiled and carefully made his way towards the couch area.

Sonya Morsov insisted that they all call her ‘Grandma’ when she first suggested to allow the boys to have these sleep overs to help the socially stunted children a chance at some normalcy. “Nicholas,” She pulled Nux close and hugged him, then slipped him the last remaining bag. “Root Beer and ice cream. Make floats and watch movies.” She looked around, seeing the red-head. “Come here, girl.” 

Morsov set the pizza on the coffee table and gestured for Capable to get up and go over. Slit and Toast descended the steps just then.

“Girls, come over here.” 

Slit practically steered Toast and Capable over. “Hi Grandma.”

“Simon,” She pulled Slit in for a hug as well, then dismissed him. “Who are you?” She turned her attention to the girls.

“Catherine Rockatansky. This is my sister Tina,” Capable smiled, being her usual sweet self.

“Rockatansky… the police officer’s daughters?” 

“Yes, that’s right. Nu-Nick invited us over to play games. Our dad is coming to pick us up at eleven when his shift is over.” Toast seemed perfectly fine letting Capable do all the talking. 

“Good, good. I don’t mind having you over. Just not overnight with the boys. Go eat. I will be upstairs.” Morsov kept quiet until he heard Grandma’s TV turn on upstairs, then let out a sigh. That could have gone badly.

It was Slit that broke the silence. “Pizza’s getting cold.”

Food was passed around and a mindless action movie was put on. The mood settled a little while they ate. “How’d you all meet? In middle school?” Capable asked, tucked into Nux’s right side.

“Grew up together,” Morsov answers though his mouthful of chips. The line of questioning was getting dangerous again, though he didn’t quite have the finesse or angry glare to shut it down.

“How’d you and Tost become sisters?” Slit countered. Morsov could tell he was slipping into his asshole defense mode.

“Isn’t there really only one way?” Coma asked from his spot on the floor. 

The tension cracked and they all looked over at Coma, who’d taken off his sunglasses hours ago. “What?”

“Toast is black. Capable is white. They aren’t actually sisters.” Slit snapped, ripping open another bag of chips.

“Oh,” Coma said with the tone of someone that just had some kind of philosophical insight. “Huh. Hey, you wanna see a trick?”

“Sure,” Capable smiled and Morsov tried to hold in his groan. Nux seemed to keep a straight face for once.

Coma set his guitar aside and brought his hand up to his face. This was funny when they were twelve and thought everything about “civilized” living was hilarious. Now it was just lame.

But Capable and Toast both shrieked when Coma popped out one of his prosthetic eyes. Nux covered his ears and Slit just cackled with Coma.

“Don’t mind him, he hasn’t had anyone new to pull that trick on in a while. They’re fake.” Morsov explained, picking up the chips that fell on the carpet and started eating them. He couldn’t stand wasted food.

“That’s not funny, Coma.” Toast grumbled and sat back on the couch.

“It was hilarious, Coma.” Slit grinned and picked up some of the floor chips of his own. “What’s wrong with you, Nux?” Slit nudged Nux in the back with his foot.

Nux held his left shoulder with his right hand. “Just hurts.”

Morsov knelt down next to Nux and pried his hand away from the spot. There was a kind of hard lump where his neck met his shoulder. “Dude, what the hell is this?”

“I don’t know, it wasn’t there this morning.” Nux half-shrugged.

Slit came in from behind and prodded at it with his finger. “If it doesn’t go away tomorrow, you’re going to the doctor.”

“Shit.” Nux slumped against Capable, who wrapped her arm around his waist.

“Well Coma,” Toast started, “Nux is trying to top you by growing a second head.”

“Aww man!” Coma groaned and pouted.

Everyone’s attention turned back to the movie, each lost in their own thoughts. Morsov watched Nux curl up against Capable, his posture defeated. Slit was sitting far too still as well, though when Morsov looked over, he saw that his friend had his arm draped around Toast’s shoulder, who was also sitting very still, as if neither of them wanted to spook the other.

“Hey, who wants a root beer float?” Morsov stood up and retrieved another set of cups and the ice cream from earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter. Morsov takes this chapter. I felt he needed a bit of attention here, he was a good way to introduce some of the boys' pasts.


	8. Not a Social Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa ran around the house, picking up and straightening whatever she could. Today was the day of the social worker’s visit. The visits usually didn’t last long and she usually didn’t make such a big deal of them, but since Nux’s latest doctor’s visit, he hasn’t been doing well. Social services got twitchy the last time Nux was too sick to talk to the social worker. 
> 
> “Furi, calm down, everything will be fine,” Val settled her hands on Furiosa’s shoulders. She was so tense. “When she comes, I’ll get Nux up to talk to her, alright?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per request from @ainashahiraXD, there's a bit of Val and Furiosa here, a sweet moment of affection.

Furiosa ran around the house, picking up and straightening whatever she could. Today was the day of the social worker’s visit. The visits usually didn’t last long and she usually didn’t make such a big deal of them, but since Nux’s latest doctor’s visit, he hasn’t been doing well. Social services got twitchy the last time Nux was too sick to talk to the social worker. 

“Furi, calm down, everything will be fine,” Val settled her hands on Furiosa’s shoulders. She was so tense. “When she comes, I’ll get Nux up to talk to her, alright?”

“Yeah, okay. Where’s Slit?” Furiosa leaned into Val a little. The older woman started working Furiosa’s knotted shoulders.

“Track practice. Neighbor girl went with him. That’s new, isn’t it?” She was sure that Slit hadn’t been interested in a girl before. But he seemed to be in a less shitty mood than usual in the mornings.

“Yeah, Toast. She’s interesting. One day we’ll have to have her and Capable over. Capable is Nux’s girlfriend.” Furiosa turned, a small smile on her face. “Boys are growing up.”

“They are.” Val pressed a kiss against her lover’s lips. The ancient hall phone started ringing. “Why the hell do you still have a land line?”

“Mostly because it came with the cable package,” Furi reluctantly slipped away to pick up the old phone. “Hello?”

Val sighed and finished the cleaning, which mostly consisted of putting Nux’s tools back in the box. Someone gave him a broken radio controlled car to tinker with; it helped pass the time, she supposed. 

“Yes. Yes, I understand. No, no I’ll keep an eye on them. Alright. Good bye.” Furiosa sounded tense again and Val sighed and turned back to the living room.

“What was that about?”

“Mrs. Morsov. She remembered where she heard the name Rockatansky.” Furiosa’s mouth turned down into a frown. “Max was the police officer that broke out of the compound with those prisoners.”

Valkyrie frowned and pulled Furiosa into her arms. She was well aware of Furi and the boys’ past in the service of Joe Moore and his network of illegal activities. Most of the cops were on Joe’s payroll, as well as half the school board and too many businesses to count. The only way Furiosa was able to take the boys with her when she left was that she and Ace could bring down some heavy investigation on the man for how he treated the boys he took in. Slit, Nux, Coma and Morsov had enough marks on them to make any jury convict. But they left it alone, for some damn reason that Valkyrie couldn’t figure out. If it were her, she’d scream to high heaven and get the whole operation shut down. 

“You think those girls were Joe’s prisoners then?” She really didn’t like where this was going. Especially not with the social worker due any minute now.

“Yeah, I do. Just not sure how Rockatansky fits into this yet.” Furiosa picked up her prosthetic but didn’t move to put it on yet. 

“He might not even fit into it. Might just be a coincidence,” Val took Furiosa’s glare and helped her to put her arm on. “Or he already knows and decided it wasn’t a big deal. Look, if you’re worried, why not just have one of the boys ask one of the girls? Nux would probably be better at it, he’s got a little more tact.”

Furiosa nodded and finished strapping her arm on. “Yeah… maybe we can have Capable over later. If Nux is up for it.”

The doorbell rang and Val gently shoved her lover towards her bedroom to put on a shirt over her tank top. By now Val was an old hand at dealing with social workers, she’s met most of the ones that have been assigned to the boys and they all have her contact information in case of emergencies. She opened the door to see Honey Shepherd, a stern woman but one of the more open case workers that Val has met. “Hi, Ms. Shepherd, come on in.”

“Hello, Ms. Vulvalini. It’s good to see you again.” Ms. Shepherd came in the door, pulling a tablet out of her large purse to check her notes. “Are the boys home today? I didn’t see Simon’s car.”

“Simon went to track practice. Nick is upstairs though. Furiosa’s waking him up now.”

Ms. Shepherd entered the old house and looked around, just like she’s supposed to do. She made a couple of notes and Val restrained herself from trying to peek over the shorter woman’s shoulder.

Nux descended the stairs, still half-asleep and wearing a baggy t-shirt and sweatpants. The bandage on his neck where he had the biopsy still bore the smiley face that someone drew on it. Furiosa steered him to the couch in the living room and sat down beside him. Val followed Ms. Shepherd and stood along the wall while the larger woman took a seat on the opposite side of the old L-shaped couch. 

“How are you feeling today, Nick?”

Val was impressed by the way Nux managed not to roll his eyes at the woman. “I’m alright, ma’am.” Nux knew not to go into detail because the first time he told the social worker he felt ill, she panicked and Nux almost got taken away. The system wasn’t quite set up for kids with disabilities or chronic illnesses. It was good then, that they were able to find Coma’s mother once Furiosa freed the boys.

“That’s good. How’s your schoolwork going?”

“Fine. I got ahead of the regular class. I figured I’d need to be ahead if I gotta do more tests at the hospital.” He answered with a yawn.

“More tests?” Furiosa experienced the laser-focus of the woman’s attention now.

“He just had a biopsy on a swollen lymph node, we’re waiting to see what the results say.” Furiosa ran her hand on the dark stubble of Nux’s head. The teenager shifted and leaned his head on Furiosa’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He’s been more tired lately and several things come to Val’s mind, none of them good, but she made a promise not to say any of her suspicions in front of him. Hopefully she was just being paranoid.

“I see.” Ms. Shepherd’s stern face softened at the show of affection, a hint of genuine concern showed in her eyes. Maybe this one wasn’t so bad. Maybe she still looked at these kids as kids and not things to be passed around.

“I’m back! And I found a red-head outside that wants to check on the patient.” Slit yelled from the front door.

“Living room, Simon!” Furiosa called.

Ms. Shepherd continued to make notes when Slit came in, followed by Capable, her hair in twin braids. Nux’s blue eyes landed on his girlfriend and his lips turned up in a tired smile, but he didn’t move from Furiosa’s shoulder.

“Catherine?” Ms. Shepherd looked puzzled and checked her notes, furiously swiping at her tablet. “This is… highly unusual and… and a conflict of interest.”

“What’s going on Ms. Shepherd? Our home visit doesn’t usually happen for another week.” Capable looked confused and held the door frame in a death grip. Slit moved away from her to perch on the arm of the sofa closest to Nux.

Ms. Shepherd stood up and briskly walked to the door. “I need to make some calls. Catherine, come with me please. It would be best if you didn’t come here again until I investigate how this oversight happened.” The older woman took Capable by the arm and started pulling her along.

Val recognized the look of terror in the girl’s eyes and stepped in front of the larger woman. “Let her go. You make your calls but she won’t go anywhere against her will. She chose to visit her friend from school. You don’t take her out of here without her permission.”

The woman glared, but Val was an ER nurse, she wouldn’t back down from anyone. Furiosa was at her side now, blocking the social worker off from all three kids. 

“I’ll be back,” Ms. Shepherd threatened and stormed out of the house. 

Val and Furiosa stood shoulder to shoulder until the woman’s old Honda turned the corner at the end of the block.

Back in the living room, Nux had his arm wrapped around Capable, whispering something to her as Slit looked on a little helplessly.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Capable kept muttering and wiping at her face.

“Shhh, it’s alright. You didn’t do anything.” Nux mumbled and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around the both of their shoulders. 

Slit helped settle them and looked over. “What the hell was that about?”

Furiosa sighed and sat down. “Do you remember the night we left the compound?”

Nux looked up, startled. “Of course. How could we forget?”

Capable seemed to snap out of her panic and focus as well. “What compound?” She wiped at her eyes and looked at Nux.

Furiosa slid forward in her seat. “Capable, I need you to answer honestly. What do you remember about the day you and your sisters were rescued?”

The teenaged girl seems to freeze again and then hangs her head. “I… we… Max. Max snuck us into a trailer that was on the back of a truck leaving the… the place we were held. It was dark. I couldn’t tell where we were.” She sighed and pulled away from Nux a little. “We were being followed and the truck was going very fast. And… something happened and the trailer came unhitched. Angharad fell out and almost got run over. Max stopped another one of the cars and… and we got out.”

Slit’s eyes narrowed as he started putting two and two together. Nux’s face took on a pained expression. “I took the wheel as Morsov fired out the back window. We needed to lose the weight.”

“We didn’t realize there were people in the trailer until after. The truck we planned on taking had a flat,” Furiosa supplied. “I unhitched the trailer. Slit covered me.”

Capable was quiet for a long moment. “Why… why did you escape? What did they do to you?”

“All the boys were half-starved, beaten, practically brainwashed and otherwise abused. Nux was sick, not getting any real medical care. Slit and Morsov were nearly beaten to death. Coma was kept chained to an amp to play music all day.” 

The girl shifted, nearly folding in on herself. “We were his… wives. Whoever… whoever he was.”

Slit let out a harsh laugh. “You don’t know? The cop doesn’t know?!”

“No. He… he wore a mask. It was covered in… horse teeth and… he didn’t say much. He… he…” she took a deep breath, “I was kidnapped when I was eleven. He kept us all together… in an apartment. We never saw anyone other than him and an old woman that fed us.”

“His name is Joe Moore, and he owns most of this town.”

Capable shot up to her feet. “Does he know where we are?!?”

Furiosa tipped one shoulder up in a half-shrug. “He hasn’t made a move against me yet. So either he’s still laying low after all the press he got when we blew up his old factory, or he’s too stupid to look for us right under his nose.”

“I… I need to go.” Capable rushed out, Val made sure she made it inside her house.

“That could’ve gone better,” Slit stretched his arms above his head.

Nux got up and ran to the bathroom, heaving into the toilet. 

“I’m going to call Ace, Mrs. Morsov and Officer Rockatansky. We need to figure out a plan.” Val picked up the phone and started dialing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens!


	9. Exit Strategy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max sat on the couch staring at the TV while Dag and Cheedo’s movie about vampires or fairies played on. It was sappy and he wasn’t too sure it was appropriate for their age, but they are both technically old enough for the PG-13 rating. He took another pull of his beer and leaned back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. If one more teenaged boy takes his shirt off in this movie, he’s going to need something stronger.
> 
> Dag, at least, kept trying to point out the inaccuracies which Cheedo responded with hushing and pouting. After all they’d been through, it was nice to see that Cheedo still believed in the classic fairytale romance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can tell, I've been on vacation for a week and a half and had a ton of time to do nothing but write on this story. I go back to work tomorrow, so updates will probably slow down some, but I hope to not leave you hanging so long between chapters.
> 
> Some more life in the Rockatansky house, as well as some more plot.

Max sat on the couch staring at the TV while Dag and Cheedo’s movie about vampires or fairies played on. It was sappy and he wasn’t too sure it was appropriate for their age, but they are both technically old enough for the PG-13 rating. He took another pull of his beer and leaned back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. If one more teenaged boy takes his shirt off in this movie, he’s going to need something stronger.

Dag, at least, kept trying to point out the inaccuracies which Cheedo responded with hushing and pouting. After all they’d been through, it was nice to see that Cheedo still believed in the classic fairytale romance. 

He set his beer down and stretched his leg out on the coffee table. The day he rescued the girls, he tore his ACL in the crash. Some days he didn’t think about it, but when he sat still too long, his whole leg seems to ache. He spent the day mostly inside, first helping Angharad with her trip planning, then he got guilted into this movie marathon by Cheedo and Dag.

“Stop it Dag! You’re ruining it!” Cheedo cried, catching Max’s attention again.

“I’m just saying, all she’s doing is crying about boys. She doesn’t even know how terrible they are.” Dag crossed her arms and snorted, swearing under her breath.

“Dag, it’s just a movie. You picked the last movie, this is Cheedo’s turn. Settle down the both of you or I’ll put on tennis or… golf.” He knew his threat was empty, but it stopped the argument for now. Maybe he should have asserted his authority and had the thing shut off. He was pretty sure the main girl could be replaced with a mop and the acting would improve.

The front door opened and he caught the flash of red that signaled Capable’s return. She mumbled a greeting and ran up the stairs without stopping; she’d only been gone for fifteen minutes. How the hell had it only been fifteen minutes of this movie?! He got up off the couch and headed towards the stairs.

“You want us to pause it?” Dag called, teasing him.

“No. I’ll be back down in a few minutes.” He grumbled and limped up the stairs towards Capable’s room. Something about her return bothered him enough to want to check on her. He knocked on her door. “Can I come in?”

A tense moment passed where he heard her bed creak and the knob turn. “How’s Nux?” He asked, noting the tissue balled up in her hand and the redness about her eyes.

“Not well. He looks terrible,” she sank down on the bed, pulling apart the tissue nervously. “He lost more weight. He didn’t say but I could tell when he put his arm around me.”

Max made a mental note to schedule her an appointment with her therapist later. Grief counseling wasn’t his strong suit. He pulled up her desk chair and winced as it squeaked loudly. “Wanna talk about it?”

She wiped her eyes again and sighed, curling up on her side. “He reminds me of my mama. I mean, not really but… but the situation. She just got… sicker and sicker until she was gone and Daddy dropped me off at that… that place.” She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. 

From what he and social services gathered, Capable’s mother died of some kind of terminal illness and her father, unable to hold down a job and take care of her, took her to a homeless shelter, let her fall asleep and left her there. Someone had taken her from there and she ended up as the child bride of a masked maniac. The other girls had similar stories, no real family left to look for them when they went missing. “Did Nux get a diagnosis yet? Anything beyond managing symptoms?”

Pale fingers tugged the elastic out of her hair and she ran her fingers through the messy braids. “No. I didn’t get to ask. Ms. Shepherd was there.”

The name was familiar, but he couldn’t picture a face that went with it. “Who?”

“The social worker, remember? The uh… really fat woman? Dag called her a cow.” She kept her fingers knotted in her hair.

“Oh. Right. I remember her. She didn’t like much of anything.” He frowned, remembering how the woman decided that Cheedo sleeping in Angharad’s room was just coddling her. “What did she say to you?”

“She said it was inappropriate. What’s inappropriate? That I can be friends with the neighbors? That I get on with my life? That I’m allowed to move on and be a normal teenager that isn’t defined by a terrible and traumatic experience?” She rolled off the bed and paced around the cluttered space.

The Jobassa family probably had to deal with the same broken system that the Rockatanskys did. “Was she responding to an incident or is she their caseworker too?”

“She was there to check on them. Nux told me that they get extra visits because every time he goes to the hospital, child services gets notified. I guess it’s supposed to try to prevent abuse, but to them it’s just more pressure to toe whatever line they set.” She raked her fingers through her red curls and sighed, taking a seat on the bed again. “Ms. Shepherd grabbed my arm and tried to drag me out of the house.”

“She what?” He frowned, his fingers already wrapped around his phone. “I’m calling her manager. She’s not allowed to do that.”

Capable reached out and touched Max’s wrist. “There’s more.”

He clenched his jaw and lowered his phone, motioning her to go on.

“Nux and Slit and Furiosa… they escaped from the same place as us. They… Nux drove the truck. Furiosa unhitched the trailer. They… they didn’t know we were in there until later.” She bit her lip and looked into his eyes. 

Max forced himself to breathe evenly, not wanting to worry Capable with his anger. Finally, he might be able to get some answers! He turned down an early retirement, suffered through an investigation on his actions that night and got busted down from detective to beat cop for continuing to work the case after it had supposedly been handed off to the FBI. He eventually had to stop once his lieutenant threatened to call child services and have the girls placed in “more appropriate” homes. As much as he wanted to know who hurt them, he didn’t want to risk losing his daughters. Last year a man named Scott Otis was arrested for the crime, but Max didn’t think he was right for it.

“Did they say anything else?” He stood and sat down next to her on the bed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Capable wasn’t like Angharad, she needed hugs when she was upset.

She was far too big to climb into Max’s lap, but somehow she was there and curled up against his chest. “Joe Moore.”

He nearly missed the words that she spoke into his shirt. He gently pulled away so he could hear her. “Say that again?”

Capable sniffled and looked up at him. “Furiosa said Joe Moore did it. He’s the man that hurt us. He hurt Nux and Slit too. Different ways.”

Joe Moore’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant Arthur Kalashnikov was Max’s boss, therefore untouchable. It made sense that Max’s investigation was cut short. He didn’t like it, not one bit, especially now that this meant that Moore knew where the girls were. 

He eased Capable off of his lap and drew a soft blanket over her curled up form. He didn’t recognize it. “Is this new?”

“Hmm? Oh. Nux made it for me. He started it a while ago but since it was yellow and orange and pink he said it reminded him of me.” She sniffled and smiled a little, despite the fact that she may or may not be torn over his involvement in the crash that killed Angharad’s baby.

“Capable…” he started uncertainly. Several questions came to mind but he rejected the first three as being over-protective, outdated and a little insensitive and went with the safest option. “How do you feel about Nux?” 

She was quiet, fidgeting with the ends of her hair. “He’s sweet. Very smart. And he just… he understands that… that sometimes I don’t want to do anything except sit next to him. He’s not pushy. But I know… I know he’s had some stuff in his past… we haven’t talked about it yet. And… and I guess I’m afraid that I’m kind of in love with him and I don’t know him much at all.”

Love? Did she say love? He tried not to roll his eyes because Capable was always rather serious in her assessment of others. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her she didn’t know what love was yet, she’s only sixteen, and so on. He kept the knee-jerk ‘I don’t want you seeing that boy’ reaction inside as he tried to remain rational. “Have you two…?” he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. He thought he’d have more time before he needed to have a sex talk with any of the girls.

“What? No! No. We’ve made out but that’s it. We’re… there’s no rush. And I’m not ready.” She pulled a pillow over her face, her cheeks turning pink. “God, did you have to ask?”

“I did. I’m your father and if I need to scare a boy away, I will.” He remembered meeting his wife’s father the first time and being terrified. “But we have more serious business with the Jobassas. If they were there that night…”

She hugged the pillow and looked up at him, a serious look on her face. “Then he knows where we are and could get us at any moment. But he’s waiting for something.” 

“We’re missing something. Something important.” He hummed and stared out the window towards the neighbor’s house.

“You’ll figure it out, Dad. I know you can.” The girls didn’t often use the D-word, but when they did, he felt his heart flutter and he wanted to just murder anyone that would dare hurt his little girls.

He patted her hair and left Capable’s room, forcing himself to wait until he was halfway down the stairs before he mentally checked where all his guns and their bug-out bags were. If Moore was behind the girls’ imprisonment, then he absolutely knew where they were. He must have decided to wait until everyone forgot the news story of the five girls that escaped a sex trafficking ring with the help of a wounded detective. What was Moore waiting for? Who was Otis and why did he take the fall for Moore? Who else in the force was involved?

Too many questions. He frowned and grabbed his service pistol and checked it before tucking it away. He grabbed his backup piece and shoved it in his ankle holster.

“Max! You missed the whole middle of the movie!” Cheedo whined.

“Sorry, Cheedo, something came up.” He crossed to the living room and ruffled her dark hair. “You two just finish without me, okay? I need to go next door for a minute. Capable’s upstairs. Toast and Angharad should be back soon.”

He needed answers and Furiosa probably had them.


	10. In Sickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux couldn’t fall back asleep. He was hot, burning up inside and the stuffy room seemed stifling. He should have stayed down there with the others, to talk about what happened with the social worker. That woman… she was probably Joe’s spy. She first started coming around when Rick Moore, Joe’s son, spread all those rumors that almost got him and slit kicked out of school.
> 
> He peeled off his sweat soaked t-shirt and opened the window. Still hot. He grabbed his phone and inhaler and climbed out his window onto the garage roof. Once on the roof it wasn’t too difficult to drop down into the back yard and enter the garage through the door. It was much cooler in the dark garage… full of the comforting smells of grease and oil. Metal and gas. He lay down on the dirty cement floor, his head next to the front tire of his metal masterpiece and closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nux again... this one gets dark, mentions of past abuse and trauma. Max will be in the next chapter. Promise.

Nux couldn’t fall back asleep. He was hot, burning up inside and the stuffy room seemed stifling. He should have stayed down there with the others, to talk about what happened with the social worker. That woman… she was probably Joe’s spy. She first started coming around when Rick Moore, Joe’s son, spread all those rumors that almost got him and Slit kicked out of school.

He peeled off his sweat soaked t-shirt and opened the window. Still hot. He grabbed his phone and inhaler and climbed out his window onto the garage roof. Once on the roof it wasn’t too difficult to drop down into the back yard and enter the garage through the door. It was much cooler in the dark garage… full of the comforting smells of grease and oil. Metal and gas. He lay down on the dirty cement floor, his head next to the front tire of his metal masterpiece and closed his eyes. 

The new medication made him feel strange, like he did when he was a kid before Furiosa took them. As far back as he could remember, there were always cars and sickness. He used to sleep curled up on a pile of shop rags on the old bench seat of a pickup after he and Slit were separated. Nux was better at machines and Slit was the fighter, so they’d been given different jobs at age eight. Sometimes they still found each other and holed up in a forgotten corner here or there, but there were a few years they spent apart. 

More tool than boy, his owners… he didn’t think any of them were his parents… taught him about engines, mechanics and eventually electronics. Once he learned how to read and do math, anything else he was given was for the purpose of serving his task… make the cars run. Go faster. Build in this compartment so it can’t be found. He studied fuel efficiency and dreamed about gears. When he turned thirteen, or as close as they could figure, they carved the V8 into his chest. That was when he started feeling poorly, whether from infection or just his inherent sickliness he was sent to the Organic Mechanic. Now he realized that that man couldn’t have been a real doctor. Not with the things he did.

Nux rolled onto his side, careful of the bandage over his new lump (he’s been calling it Larry in his head), using his arm as a pillow. He took a careful deep breath and tried to block out the sounds of arguing in the main house. Furiosa’s raised voice. Slit’s deep protests. Val’s cool mediating. Someone else was there, but he couldn’t place the man’s voice. Not Ace? Nux would have heard Ace’s truck rumble into the driveway. He hated conflict, but it seemed to surround him no matter what he did. The balance shifted somewhere, and the peaceful and boring life he had been living was coming to an end.

He debated climbing back into his room and walking down the stairs, but Larry protested when he moved his arm, so he took a slow deep breath and walked into the house through the kitchen.

“This wasn’t our deal, Furiosa. The deal was that you get to pretend to be a family and you and keep an eye on my father’s property,” the man’s voice was raised in anger.

Something familiar tugged at his brain and he felt like a bucket of cold water was dumped over his head. His brain still felt like it was filled with cotton, his mouth was so dry it felt like his lips were stuck together.

“You wanted information, I got you information,” Furiosa stood over the small man in the electric wheelchair. Ms. Shepherd stood behind him, gripping the handles of the chair.

“Fraternizing with the girls is off-limits!” The small man shouted and gasped, waiting for his oxygen tank to supply him with more air to fuel his anger. He looked directly at Nux.

Corwin Collins… Joe Moore’s eldest son, the man that sent him to the Organic Mechanic the first time he passed out in the shops. “Corpus,” Nux muttered the man’s nickname.

“Still alive revhead?” Corpus laughed. “Still coherent enough to know you screwed up, you mediocre piece of waste!”

Slit stepped up beside Nux, an imposing presence even though Nux was taller. “Organic couldn’t kill me, you here to try?” He let the words spill out of his mouth as he wobbled on his feet, stepping closer to Corpus and the traitorous social worker. She’d been Joe’s spy all along, hadn’t she? Reporting the things that they and the Rockatanskys have been doing since they got out of Joe’s “community”.

“Now, now, revhead. You lay a finger on me and I’ll make sure that Capable is the first one that Joe punishes for the escape.” The small man laughed and wheezed.

Nux deflated, the bubbling rage turned cold in the pit of his stomach and he could almost hear the Organic Mechanic sharpening his tools. He felt Slit’s arm snake around his shoulders and he sagged against his brother.

“Good. Now, Furiosa, since the deal was broken on your side, I need assurances that you’ll stay in line.” Ms. Shepherd left Corpus’s side and opened the front door to admit two men in uniforms.

The flashing lights of the ambulance outside confused him. He didn’t need an ambulance, he was fine. Just hot. A little dizzy. Slit’s arm drew tighter around him and Nux dug his fingers into Slit’s leather jacket.

The lead paramedic… no… thug… he was just a thug in a paramedic’s uniform. He heard the fist crack against Slit’s jaw as both their bodies were rocked with the momentum. Valkyrie and Furiosa were there in an instant, stepping in front of the boys, keeping Slit from going crazy on the man that hit him. “No better than a feral, this one.” Another fist and Slit doubled over into Val. 

“Honey, I believe we have to investigate possible abuse here. Bruises on Slit.” Corpus called out gleefully. “Nux seems unbalanced, doesn’t he?”

Nux was spun around in the fight, not enough room in the living room for the fat woman, the electric wheelchair, the thug, Slit, Furiosa and Val. Nux came face to face with the second ‘paramedic’ and froze.

“And here I thought we’d never see each other again,” the greasy man smiled and Nux launched himself at the so-called Organic Mechanic. Who was screaming? It was hard to tell.

“Furiosa! Stop him or you’ll never see either of them again!”

The familiar weight and feel of Furiosa’s mismatched arms wrapped around him and the noise stopped, his hands hurt. She murmured something in his ear that he couldn’t quite catch over the sound of his labored breathing… the wheeze deep inside him rattling something loose inside. 

“Stronger than ya look, Nuxy.” The man stood, wiped his bleeding lip on the sleeve of his uniform and pulled out a long needle from his kit. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pleasant. “Just hold still. A pinch and you’ll go ta sleep.”

He didn’t even feel the pinch, just saw the needle being tossed aside carelessly. His vision blurred as he felt himself get shifted onto a stretcher.

He blinked and saw Furiosa and Val holding Slit back on the porch, keeping him back. He turned his head to see Capable, Dag and Cheedo watching from the front lawn. Angharad’s hair blew in the wind as she stepped from her car in the driveway and stood in front of her sisters.

When he woke again, the room was dark. White walls, brown tile floors, water stained ceiling tiles. The beeps and whirrs of the machines gave him more context. He moved his arms to find he was handcuffed to the bedrail.

The stained labcoat of the Organic came into view and he tried to scream, but there was something in his mouth shoved down into his throat. He tried to thrash, get his hands up to his face, but they were both chained. “I won’t let you have the chance to punch me again, Little Nuxy. Just relax, let the machine do all the work. But this isn’t a vacation. Joe is very displeased that you laid hands on his property.”

He heard the flip of paper on a clipboard and Organic came closer, hovering at the edge of his field of vision. “You failed him three times already, Nux. Did you think he wouldn’t notice?”

Nux made a strangled noise and fought against the restraints. He wouldn’t be left here again!

“But thankfully for you Joe is merciful. And he’s allowing you the medical treatment you need. It’s just a shame that when you found out your diagnosis, you turned violent and tried to kill yourself. Lucky that Slit stopped you. But now you have to stay here. With me.” The man grinned and moved out of Nux’s sightline to where the IV bags hung. A cold sensation ran down his arm and he couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore.

The lights were still down when he peeled his eyes open. How much time had passed? He shifted and heard the clank of metal on metal. Handcuffs on the old-style hospital bed. He couldn’t feel the tube down his throat anymore, but his mouth was so dry, peeling his lips apart seemed like too much effort. He felt like he was trapped inside a car that was sinking in a filthy lake.

“Awake? Good.” Organic stepped close and checked his eyes and raised the bed up. The change in direction made him queasy, but there was nothing in his stomach to come up.

At the foot of the bed was a mirror. For the first time since he was taken, he saw how terrible he looked. His skin was gray, he had dark purple bruises under his eyes, and all of his hair was gone. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes. “Chemotherapy is a bitch, isn’t it?”

“Thought… they checked for cancer,” his voice was rough and dry as he focused on the specter in the mirror in front of him.

“You of all people know how medical testing goes. You lose one set of records and it all goes to hell.” Organic fussed with another set of tubes. “You won't get to go back to that one-armed bitch. You’ll remember your place now, yeah? That girl won't even want to look at you now.”

Capable… he’d been taken away from his family as punishment for being close to Capable. But why bother even giving him treatment? The real punishment was clear… make him look suicidal and desperate, put him in a private clinic for treatment, return him home looking worse and on more drugs than before. He let out a half-sob and closed his eyes, hoping to sleep through whatever Organic meant to do to him today.


	11. Distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As soon as he stepped outside, he saw a brand new SUV with handicapped plates pulled into the driveway of the Jobassa house. His cell phone rang, loud and insistent. The mystery car forgotten, he answered the phone.
> 
> “Rockatansky.”
> 
> “Max, get to the station at once. Something big is going down,” Max’s sergeant, Fifi Macaffee barked over the phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be a terrible person for this chapter, but I kind of had fun with this.

As soon as he stepped outside, he saw a brand new SUV with handicapped plates pulled into the driveway of the Jobassa house. His cell phone rang, loud and insistent. The mystery car forgotten, he answered the phone.

“Rockatansky.”

“Max, get to the station at once. Something big is going down,” Max’s sergeant, Fifi Macaffee barked over the phone.

He didn’t want to leave, but if he started acting strange then Kalashnikov might suspect something was wrong. “I’ll be there in twenty.” He hung up the phone and ducked back inside.

“What’s going on? I thought you were going next door?” Dag asked while absently braiding beads into Cheedo’s hair.

“Work called. I have to go in. Angharad and Toast will be home soon. Capable’s upstairs.” He removed his wallet and pulled out a few bills. “Order some pizza or take out for dinner. Don’t go next door.” He set the money on the counter and quickly went to his bedroom to change into his uniform.

Capable was downstairs, still wrapped in her blanket. “Going to work. Stay here. I mean it.” 

She nodded. “Of course.” He knew he could count on her to be responsible. 

He was almost at the end of the lane when the ambulance passed him with the lights on but no siren. He frowned, seeing the vehicle park in front of the Jobassas’ house in his mirrors. He hoped Capable would stay put, no telling what might happen there.

He pushed the thought from his mind and drove out to the station, pushing all other thoughts from his mind. The sooner he could get this over with, the sooner he could be back home. The station was bustling with the usual activity. Nothing seemed urgent enough to call him in on his day off. 

Kalashnikov stood in the doorway of his office and gestured Max towards Macaffee’s desk. Max turned and then was waved into the records room. Great, he got called in to do paperwork. 

The detective inside the room waved him over. “Rockatansky, gather up all the files on the Nightrider and those copycat gangs.”

Didn’t they have anyone else better to do the grunt work? He nodded and mumbled an affirmative and started digging through the dusty old filing cabinets. He almost didn’t hear the door open again. Maybe he was going to get more orders on top of this nonsense.

The kidney punch was a surprise though. The impact made him drop the files on the floor, causing him to slide forward as he scrambled to turn around to block the second hit. His attacker hit the edge of the open drawer and cried out in pain. A second set of legs appeared in front of Max but he didn’t hesitate; he rushed forward, planting his shoulder in the second man’s midsection and winded him. 

More boots thudded on old tile and Max ducked between the tall shelves and ran towards the back of the room. If he remembered right, there was another door that lead to an old administration area. He skidded past a storage room and spotted the emergency exit. He just needed to get out of here and then…

Pain exploded in his left knee and again when his shoulder made contact with the floor. A man he didn’t know carrying a crowbar appeared before him. “You’ve just made things harder on yourself, Rockatansky.”

Another blast of white-hot pain overcame him, pulling his consciousness under. He felt his body being moved but he couldn’t seem to care as his mind shut down. He hoped the girls were still safe.

He woke with a start, pushing himself off the hard, filthy floor. A wave of nausea overcame him when he tried to move his busted knee. He’d been stripped of his uniform except his pants (no belt) and undershirt, his hands tied securely behind his back and he had some kind of gag in his mouth to keep him from making too much noise. He struggled for some time, then fell back, grunting through the gag. He sighed and closed his eyes, trying to think around the panic in his brain. 

Unconsciousness took him and blurred his sense of time even further. In his dreams, he heard his girls screaming. He watched Angharad fall… but she already fell. Years ago.

It was dark in the room when he opened his eyes again.

“Lookee here, he’s awake.” A greasy man in a stained lab coat came at him with an ancient-looking clipboard in hand. “Busted the knee, which is too bad for you but great for me. Less running I have to do after you.”

Time spun and shifted… there were no windows… he felt like he’d been in the same position on the floor for years. His back ached. His hands were going numb. His knee was worrying him, but he knew he wouldn’t get any proper treatment here.

The man stood just out of kicking range and fiddled with his paperwork. “You a blood donor? Well, doesn’t really matter now because you don’t have a choice.” The man came over and jabbed him in the neck with a needle, not as carefully as he remembered the last time he donated blood down at the station’s blood drive.

More rough hands and a jangle of equipment and the man stood, carrying a few tubes in hand. “If yer clean enough, I’ll even be able ta get you a bed instead of the floor.”

Max tried again to free his hands… but he was tied tight and every time he jarred his knee it knocked the wind from his lungs, causing him to gasp around the gag. Once he got his breathing under control, the panic started to leave him. He needed to assess his situation. Find weaknesses in the security and an exit. Figure out a way around his bum knee. He’d crawl out if he thought he could make it.

The room he was in looked like it was used for some kind of storage closet. Bare cinderblock walls, worn vinyl floor tiles, in the corner there was some kind of emergency shower built into the wall. The door had a handle instead of a knob and didn’t seem to be reinforced. Slowly, carefully, he used his good leg to push himself towards the door. 

It felt like hours, but he finally crossed the four feet and somehow wedged himself sitting almost upright against the doorframe. He dozed off in that position for a few minutes. Or hours. He looked down to see that at some point his knee had been hastily wrapped with several layers of ACE bandage. Well, it was better than nothing. Except he was sure it was twice the size of the other one. 

A scream echoing down the hall woke him. Someone else was here against their will. Max grit his teeth and pushed upwards against the doorframe with his good leg until his head hit the door handle. Unlocked. He eased up until the handle was turned and swallowed a groan when the door fell open, spilling him out into the hall.

Another scream and the sound of a slap and muttered curses drifted towards him. He moved along on his side, using his hip and shoulder to propel himself towards some kind of cover. First though, he’d have to make it past the room with the screaming.

He tried to ignore the sounds from the room. He had to get to cover. Think. Get the restraints off. Find some kind of crutch. And a weapon. They didn’t lock the door, which meant they didn’t think he’d be able to move at all. He had surprise on his side.

“Please…” a hoarse voice rasped.

A man laughed and said something too low to hear. Or maybe Max didn’t want to hear. 

He tried to shuffle himself along faster, but the sound of old sneakers rushed towards him. “Got farther than I thought you would!” The man in the lab coat laughed and hauled Max up by the arms, shifting his weight to his bad leg. Two other men grabbed him by the shoulders and drug him inside the room. The men tossed him onto an ancient gurney and he howled when one of them grabbed his injured leg. The “doctor” stuck him with another needle. From the corner of his eye, he saw the long tube fill with blood disappear between the curtains that surrounded the person in the other bed.

No, no no… he couldn’t do this now. He had to get away. He needed to get back home! His head swam and he cried out again when the doctor pulled his bad leg straight. He felt the restraints strap him down to the table. “Be back in an hour!” 

The three men retreated, closing and locking the door behind them. He tried to move, but he was too securely fastened to the gurney. A shadow shifted on the other side of the curtain, the tube connecting them wobbled a little. He grunted and made noise, wobbling the gurney but the other person didn’t move. Trapped! He tried again to tip the gurney over.

“Bloodbag…” the voice from earlier rasped, sounding rough and unused. “If you pull out the line, I’ll have to call him back in here and I’d… I’d rather not.”

Help! Max shook the gurney again, trying to pull out the needle in his neck or tip himself over. 

The curtain parted and he saw a bald head and hollow blue eyes. Familiar eyes. “I said… cut it out!” The ghost of a teenager lurched to a halt, his hands grasping on the rail of the gurney.

Max looked up into Nux’s surprised blue eyes. “Wh-what’re you doing here?”

The gag was still in the way, Max tried to will Nux to free him. But he could tell the kid was in bad shape. 

“Oh, h-hang on.” The kid reached around behind Max’s head and fumbled with the gag’s straps. He felt it tighten, then come free. Nux stuck his fingers in Max’s mouth to dislodge the rubber that held Max’s tongue down. He heard the thing get tossed as he carefully opened and closed his mouth once it was free.

“Thanks.” He grunted, watching pale and shaking fingers work the leather restraints.

“You shouldn’t be here. You need to go.” Nux stopped freeing him and leaned against Max’s side, breathing heavily. 

Max was still stuck, his arms tied behind his back. He couldn’t roll to the side until Nux removed the straps over his waist and legs. “Where?” His throat was dry, his tongue stuck to the back of his teeth.

“Dunno. Was brought here as punishment. Joe won’t just… kill me. He gave me to O-o-Organic instead.” Nux sniffed and nudged Max on his side to work at the knot tying his hands.

The word triggers a memory… Dag woke up hysterical in the middle of the night once, claiming the ‘Organic Mechanic’ was going to cut her open. He thought it was just a nightmare, but the more he thought of it, the worse it seemed. “What’d he do to you?”

Nux’s breath hitched and the knot came loose. Max pulled his arms in front of him and looked at the kid again. “Nothing. Hold still.” Nux yanked the needle out of Max’s neck and held the end up, letting the blood drain into the other end, firmly wedged into Nux’s arm. This was the first time Max saw him without a hoodie on. Not only did his arms have numerous track marks in them, his chest was carved in an intricate scarification pattern. An engine block?

Max sat up, blinking back dizziness, he forced himself upright. “How long?”

“I dunno… a week? I dunno how long you’ve been here.” Nux tried to help him by pulling him up by the arms. The only result was Nux wheezing and Max nauseous.

“Don’t know if I can stand.” He looked down at his knee and tried to flex his foot, which was also swollen and turning purple.

Nux shuffled back through the curtain and returned with a wheelchair. “Got a real chrome ride here,” he grinned, though Max could see the desperation in his eyes.

“What about you?” Max carefully slid to the floor, balancing on his good leg and swung into the chair.

“If I go home, they’ll take Slit.”

“Hey… your family won’t want you here.” Nobody’s family would want their loved one in the dreary old hospital with that greasy madman.

Nux rummaged around on his side of the room and stomped on a pair of old boots and grabbed a scalpel still in the wrapper. “We don’t have long before he comes back.”

Max took the scalpel and started to push the chair forward when Nux leaned over his shoulder. “No. I’m driving. We take out one of the guards, then you’ll get a gun.”

He didn’t expect the speed with which the sickly teenager pushed the chair, but he appreciated it. Up until he literally rammed Max into the first guard.

The fight was dirty, the scalpel was sharp, but Max held up the gun and Nux got to his feet, righted the wheelchair and they kept moving.


	12. Not Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max didn’t come home on Saturday. Capable and Angharad ordered takeout and kept the curtains closed. Several calls to both his cell phone and the station proved useless. His bosses said he was working a case and couldn’t be reached, but he would check in when he could.
> 
> Toast found one of Max’s shotguns and sat by the door all night. On Sunday, they moved the furniture around in the living room to create a fort of sorts… to block the windows and doors. Mattresses were pulled down from bedrooms and used to pad the walls. They made a nest in the middle of their fortress, Toast and Capable taking turns with the shotgun. They all took turns sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slow days at work so here's some more.

Max didn’t come home on Saturday. Capable and Angharad ordered takeout and kept the curtains closed. Several calls to both his cell phone and the station proved useless. His bosses said he was working a case and couldn’t be reached, but he would check in when he could.

Toast found one of Max’s shotguns and sat by the door all night. On Sunday, they moved the furniture around in the living room to create a fort of sorts… to block the windows and doors. Mattresses were pulled down from bedrooms and used to pad the walls. They made a nest in the middle of their fortress, Toast and Capable taking turns with the shotgun. They all took turns sleeping.

Monday morning, Angharad called them all out sick from school with the stomach flu. By Thursday the school called and sternly requested them all back to school unless they had a doctor’s excuse. 

On Friday, Capable stood tall, walking through the hallway pretending that nothing was wrong. She was good at faking smiles, but as the day went on, she was having a hard time keeping up the act. Slit was out today and nobody seemed to notice or care. Luckily, Morsov was in her history class. As soon as he sat down at his desk, she ambushed him. “What happened to Nux on Saturday? Why isn’t Slit in school?”

“Jesus Capable! You scared the shit out of me.” Morsov looked around and lowered his voice. “Don’t say anything to anyone about this. I mean it.” A strange look came over Morsov’s face as he made sure nobody was paying attention to them. He even opened his notebook and handed it to her. Maybe pretending that he was giving her notes that she missed. “Nux tried to kill himself.”

“What? He wouldn’t!” People started filtering in the classroom. She tried to compose herself and sat down on the desk next to Morsov.

The runner looked as distressed as she felt. “Look… I don’t think he was… you know… in his right mind. He was on a lot of stuff and that biopsy freaked him out. I don’t know where he is now. Slit won’t say.” He leaned forward and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t think he knows.”

The bell rang and she moved to her own seat, ignoring the lecture to worry about Nux. What exactly happened after she left?

The bell rang again and she frowned at her blank notebook page before hurrying to meet her sisters to go home. She didn’t say anything until they were all home, eating grilled cheese sandwiches and taking turns guarding the door. “Something happened at the Jobassas’ on Saturday.”

“Of course something happened, we all saw the ambulance,” Dag peeled the crusts off her sandwich and tilted her head, waiting for Capable to continue.

“Morsov said that Nux tried to kill himself,” she said, still not believing it.

Angharad pressed her lips together, crossing her arms to hide the scars on her wrists. “Sometimes it’s hard to see a better way out.”

“Hey, you knew he wasn’t right in the head. Plus, if what you said was true and they were…” Toast trailed off on her line of thought, not wanting to bring up that particular piece of information again. “I knew Slit was a scummy asshole.”

“We can’t go over there, Dad said to stay here,” Cheedo whined, sliding closer to Dag.

“We can’t stay here forever,” Angharad reasoned. “He’ll be back when he can. We have to try to act like nothing is wrong.” She looked at Capable, “you and Toast go next door and talk to Furiosa. Get some real answers.”

“Why do I have to go?” Toast grumbled, not happy with her task.

“Because it won’t seem out of place and between the two of you, you’ll ask the most questions.” Angharad took the shotgun from Toast’s hands and set it down against the wall with a disgusted look.

Capable sighed and took the lead, crossing their quiet street. It seemed like time stood still after she knocked on the door. She was just about to turn around when Slit answered the door, his face a mess of yellow and purple healing bruises. “What do you want?”

“The hell happened to you?” 

Slit growled, actually growled at Toast before he stepped back from the door. Furiosa stood between Slit and the outside, a grim look on her face. “You two can’t come here anymore.”

“No, wait!” Capable stopped Furiosa from slamming the door in their faces. “Our Dad disappeared. He’s not answering his phone. The police won’t tell us anything.”

“Why here?” Furiosa looked both girls up and down. “Why come to me then?”

“Because we know you’re involved,” Toast hissed, sticking an accusing finger at the older woman. “I bet you know who has Max.”

Furiosa was still as a statue, then whispered, “You girls go to the track banquet tomorrow night. We’ll talk then.”

The door shut and locked with finality and Toast pulled Capable off the porch, hurrying her back into their home.

“I don’t like sneaking around. Feels too silly,” Dag flopped down on the floor dramatically.

“I don’t like this plan.” Cheedo wrapped herself around Angharad. “What if they’re all lying?”

“We either go and learn something or we stay here and be too afraid to go outside. I’m not letting those monsters take our freedom away again,” Angharad stood up and went to the kitchen, making some macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Capable spent the night dreaming of Nux’s hollow eyes as he was loaded into the back of the ambulance. Sometimes she saw him dead. She knew she should be focused on Max. If he didn’t show up soon, social services could step in and separate them. She didn’t want to go back to a group home.

School the next day passed by slowly. A test she completely forgot to study for left her baffled until she wrote down her best guesses. Once this was all over, she’d have to do better in calculus if she wanted to keep her grades up. 

They dressed up for the banquet and piled into Angharad’s car to go back to school. Miss Giddy met them at the door. “Come with me, quickly.” The old woman pulled them through the old hallways and into the old art classroom. 

They weren’t the only ones there. Morsov and his grandmother spoke quietly in Russian. Coma tapped out a rhythm with his white cane next to a dark-haired woman that could only be his mother. Furiosa stood next to a man… Ace, she thinks his name is, and didn’t acknowledge their presence. Slit was behind Coma, lounging on one of the old tables as if he owned it. Miss Giddy left the room then, and Angharad stepped up to Furiosa.

“We won’t be kept in the dark any longer. Tell us what’s going on.”

“Joe Moore kidnaps children and inserts them into gangs or passes them along in his trafficking ring. He uses boys for labor and soldiers and uses the girls for sex. You girls weren’t his first batch of ‘wives’ and unless he dies any time soon, you won’t be his last.” Furiosa didn’t try to soften things. She laid it all out as it was. “Three years ago, Ace and I worked for him. We grabbed as many boys as we could fit in a truck and ran.”

“Why did you only leave with boys,” Dag asked, dancing around Angharad to see what Furiosa’s reaction was.

“Slit and Morsov were easy to take out of the ranks, I had them assigned to my team. Nux worked in the garage, and Coma was on the way between the barracks and the garage. Just had them follow me out and to a truck. Threw Nux in on the way out. Couldn’t go back for anyone else. Didn’t have time.”

“So that’s it then? You didn’t want to bother with the rest?” Toast questioned, looking over the faces of the adults.

“If it wasn’t for you, we would have actually gotten away,” Slit sat up and leveled a glare at them all. “We would’ve been out and gone and they wouldn’t have noticed except for Joe’s shiny wives all escaped at the same time and hijacked our trailer of supplies.”

Capable remembered the trailer, how odd it was that it’d been full of camping gear, water and food. The cans flew at them when they rolled and tumbled. 

“It’s all your fault, couldn’t even wait one more day?” Slit stood next to Angharad, not quite looming over her. 

“No. We couldn’t.” Angharad turned from Slit to Furiosa. “He made you spy on us.” It wasn’t a question.

“He let us be as long as we kept him updated on you and your sisters, yes. He couldn’t control the media then. He had to buy out half the cops in order to keep his operation going.” Ace put his arm around Coma’s mother. “But he didn’t want the boys near you.”

“Nux couldn’t keep his hands off though.”

Capable burned with anger. She wasn’t a thing. She wasn’t going to let someone else tell her who she’s allowed to like.

“We are not things!” Angharad shouted it loud enough to make the room echo. “We are not things!”

Capable took her elder sister’s hand. “No. We couldn’t wait. But isn’t there something we can do now? To get away from him?”

“Not while he has Nux,” Furiosa looked Angharad straight in the eye. “He probably has your fool of a father too.”

“How do we get them back?” Cheedo asked, looking at the others wide-eyed but trying to be brave. 

“We don’t know where they are, or if they’re even in the same place.” Morsov pulled out a large tube from the corner and shook out a large paper, laying it on the table with Ace and his grandmother’s help. “These are the places we know Joe owns.”

Everyone gathered around the table, looking at the map, except Coma, who sat on the edge of the table and listened. Capable could see several sites with large X’s which looked like they were in the part of town they avoided. There were a few other markings, one with ‘V8’ written above it. “What’s this?”

“The garage. It’s a scrapyard where Joe gets cars rebuilt for his smuggling business. Nux wouldn’t be there.” Ace tapped another spot on the map. “This old hotel, the pits… Joe used to run as his training camp. Doubt he’d be there either. Cop might be there though.”

“Yeah but so is Corpus.” Furiosa hummed under her breath and stepped away from the table. “They wouldn’t put them in a place we know.”

“Maybe we just need to draw Joe out then. Let him show his hand. But we have to work together,” Angharad held her hand out to Furiosa.

Capable tore her eyes away from the map just in time to see the handshake.

“But we do things my way,” Furiosa said sternly. “Morsov, get them a cell phone.”

Morsov pulled an old worn flip phone from one of the pockets in his cargo pants and hands it to Cheedo. “Keep that safe. It’s a burner. Can’t trace it. Joe can’t trace it.”

“What do we do now?” Capable asked, watching Cheedo turn the old phone in her hands.

“We need to get some shit together,” Ace took off his baseball cap and scratched his bald head. “How’s that safe house of yours, Boss?”

Furiosa sighed and nodded. “Yeah, alright. It’s still there. We’ll get provisions together and go there. If it draws the bastard out, I’ll burn it.”


	13. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The store room was a gold mine. Nux pulled on a pair of old scrubs that were too short in the legs and too baggy in the chest. He’s pretty sure they were a woman’s size, but he can’t be bothered now because if they were really getting out of there, he’d need more than just the $23 they got out of the unfortunate guard’s wallet and whatever he could scrounge up from the closet to make Max a makeshift knee brace.
> 
> His uniform pants had to stay on, Nux wasn’t going to bother cutting them off, but he wrapped Officer Rockatansky’s knee in the ACE bandage, making sure to keep the leg as straight as he could. Some old shelf brackets were pulled down off the wall to brace the leg straight. He worked as fast as he could while his partner held the gun on the door. “Got another bandage to go around. Wish we could find a proper brace, or at least another pair of shoes.”
> 
> “You doing okay?”
> 
> Nux looked up and nodded quickly. “I’m… fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be longer and come out a while ago but a bunch of things happened and I didn't feel like writing for a couple days. I will update when I can.

The store room was a gold mine. Nux pulled on a pair of old scrubs that were too short in the legs and too baggy in the chest. He’s pretty sure they were a woman’s size, but he can’t be bothered now because if they were really getting out of there, he’d need more than just the $23 they got out of the unfortunate guard’s wallet and whatever he could scrounge up from the closet to make Max a makeshift knee brace.

His uniform pants had to stay on, Nux wasn’t going to bother cutting them off, but he wrapped Officer Rockatansky’s knee in the ACE bandage, making sure to keep the leg as straight as he could. Some old shelf brackets were pulled down off the wall to brace the leg straight. He worked as fast as he could while his partner held the gun on the door. “Got another bandage to go around. Wish we could find a proper brace, or at least another pair of shoes.”

“You doing okay?”

Nux looked up and nodded quickly. “I’m… fine.” He lied, knowing that the officer would see through it, but there wasn’t anything he could do. “We need to get a car. I can drive us out of here.” He grabbed a plastic bag and filled it with odds and ends, a screwdriver, more bandages and the wallets they took off the guards.

“You don’t look fine.”

Nux sagged a little on his knees, slouching forward and trying to take as deep a breath as he could. “I’m not dead yet, Officer,” he muttered, taking a moment to pull himself back together. He could feel the weariness creeping up on him, he was going to burn out soon. Hopefully they could be far, far away from this place before then.

“Max, that’s my name.” Nux felt Max’s hand cautiously touch the back of his head in a poor mimic of what Furiosa and Slit do when he’s feeling poorly. He leaned into the touch for a second and then pushed himself up off the floor.

“Come on Max… we have to get up,” he grabbed Max’s hands and helped him stand.

“It’s… not so bad. Did a good job.” Max took a shaky step and Nux looped his arm around him to help him. The compliment helped push him forward, he knew if he stopped for too long, he’d not be able to get back up again.

Slowly, they made their way through the old hospital, only running into the bare minimum resistance. They collected more weapons and wallets on their way, stopping only to catch their breath. “Has to… be a car here somewhere,” Nux wheezed, wishing he’d had that damned inhaler.

Max looked around and nodded to the right, limping on ahead. Nux leaned against the wall, closing his eyes as he waited.

“Clear!” Max hissed and Nux pushed himself off the wall, looking nervously at the staircase. They were on the fourth floor and the thought of going down all those stairs with Max made him want to throw up.

But he had to. He had to get Max out of here, if only to get him back to Capable. Capable and her sisters needed him to get them away from this city, away from Joe and his crimes. He still felt it was his fault… his fault that they weren’t fast enough to get out. His fault that he couldn’t keep ahead of Joe’s army of cars with the extra load. His fault that they didn’t have time to check the trailer for stowaways.

And he was here because he couldn’t help talking to Capable, the shiny wonderful girl across the street that was so nice to him. She listened to what he had to say, even if it was stupid. She cared what happened to him even if he didn’t deserve her attention. He was just a sick mechanic, waiting out the rest of his days with his brother and mother. He never thought he’d want a girlfriend, but Capable just kept showing up at his door with her fiery hair and equally as bright smile.

“Nux!” Max called and Nux stumbled down two more flights of stairs to help push the doors open for what should be the ground floor.

The doors opened with a ghastly creak, reminding Nux of the cheesy old black and white horror movies on late at night. They were finally outside, an abandoned parking lot stretched out before them, but there was nothing familiar in the distance. 

“Here!” Max hissed and grabbed Nux’s arm, pulling him towards the old ambulance parked in front of the abandoned hospital. He grit his teeth and jogged over to the driver’s side, but stopped when he heard someone inside.

“Not worth it. I told him not to bring that mad cop in here.” 

Nux ducked down and pressed close to the side of the vehicle, careful not to be seen in the rearview mirror. He gestured towards the back to Max, hoping the man would understand.

Max nodded and limped towards the open doors, pointing the gun he had in hand in front of him.

“Ruined. And I had everything planned too.”

Max disappeared behind the ambulance and two shots split the air, then a crash from inside. “Help me,” Max called out.

Nux moved around to Max’s side and saw the body of the Organic Mechanic dead on the ambulance floor. Nux hopped up into the vehicle and shoved the body out. It fell with a thunk on the cracked pavement. He couldn’t help himself, he jumped out after and kicked the body. He must have gotten carried away because Max’s hand was on his arm, a concerned look in his eyes. 

Nux, embarrassed, turned away. “I’ll drive until we can get an automatic.”

“Are you okay?” Max asked again, his hand still on Nux’s arm.

“I’ll be okay. We need a new car fast though, we’ll stick out like a sore thumb in this thing.” Nux pulled away and climbed into the driver’s seat. He waited until Max settled himself in the passenger seat and took off, away from their former prison.

Max scrounged in the glove box, finding a map and grunting out directions as soon as they worked out where they were. They drove for an hour along old country roads until they reached the highway. Max directed him to stop at Wal-Mart near the highway entrance.

“Go in, get some cheap clothes, a pair of shoes, Tylenol, Benedryl, Gatorade and water. Take these,” Max pushed a hat and jacket towards him, and the collected cash and a credit card from the dead guards. “I’ll get us a different car. Automatic.” 

Nux nodded and pulled on the hat and clothes, repeating the list to himself so he wouldn’t forget. He was so tired. He tried to stretch the cash as far as he could, knowing it might be a while before they could get more. 

He returned to the parking lot, leaning heavily on the cart. A whistle caught his attention and lead him towards an old 1980s Dodge Dynasty. A grandma car. Max waved him inside and he tucked himself in the passenger seat. He handed Max a bottle of water and the pills. 

“We’ll have to change cars, but this one will do for now.” Max opened the Tylenol and took a large swig of the water. Then he counted out a few for Nux and the Benadryl. “Take these, they’ll help with the withdrawls.”

He nodded and took his medication, then drank the rest of the water. Max reached in the backseat and pulled one of the blankets from the ambulance and handed it over.

“We need to go to the Green Place,” Nux said wearily. “It’s… my mom’s safe house. Joe doesn’t even know about it.”

“How do I get there from here?”

“Go East… I-77, then North past Salt Flats. Wake… wake me up when we get that far.” He couldn’t think straight, his whole body hurt and he was freezing. Now that he wasn’t driving, he felt like he could just die right here.

“Sleep, you’ll feel better. I’ll wake you up when I get tired.” Max patted his head again.

Max periodically woke Nux to give him some water or other liquid. It was dark before they stopped at the seediest motel they could find. The rest of the cash went towards a shit room and gas. Nux curled up on the squeaky bed, the ambulance blanket wrapped around him.

“You okay?” Max stood over him, dressed in a set of fresh clothes. The makeshift knee brace had been replaced with something that looked like it came from a drug store and was a little more professional. 

“Probably not. Where are we? What’s… the plan?” He sat up and immediately regretted it.

Max made Nux lean forward over a trash can until the threat of vomiting passed. “You think you can eat something?” 

Nux shook his head, but took sips of the sports drink that was pressed into his hand. He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. “Where are we?”

“A day’s drive from Salt Flats. You were out of it, so I made a few stops, we switched cars again. Got some more cash. Some food if you need it.” Max sat down on the edge of the shabby chair in the corner of the room. “Tell me about this safehouse.”

“It’s a… an old farm. Used to belong to Mom’s family, long time ago. She inherited it when she was a kid. We’ve never been there but… there’s a hundred acres or so and a barn and a big farmhouse.” Nux closed his eyes and tried to picture an old white house with an overgrown yard and fences. “She always made sure we knew where to go if something bad happened.”

Max sat on the bed and Nux winced at the creaky mattress. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Did… did you take my boots?” Nux cracked one eye open and wiggled his bare toes.

“You weren’t using them them.” Max nudged Nux over and lay down beside him. “Not gonna touch you, just going to sleep for a few hours.”

“Yeah, yeah alright. Um…” Nux scooted a little closer, thinking he was out of his mind. “Can I uh…” He rested his head on Max’s shoulder. He just wanted the contact, since he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get to go home again.

Max didn’t say anything, just shifted and let Nux snuggle in close for the night.


	14. War Rig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took another week before they were ready, Furiosa and Ace somehow found an old school bus, something that would fit them all and was easy enough to modify. Slit spent most of his time removing the majority of the middle seats, installing thicker panels along the walls for shielding and some nets for storage. He supervised Morsov with the window tint and helped Toast load the bus with guns, ammo and anything they’d need to take on Joe, his goons and the corrupt cops that would be chasing after them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, real life hit in a big way and I haven't had much time to dedicate to writing this.

It took another week before they were ready, Furiosa and Ace somehow found an old school bus, something that would fit them all and was easy enough to modify. Slit spent most of his time removing the majority of the middle seats, installing thicker panels along the walls for shielding and some nets for storage. He supervised Morsov with the window tint and helped Toast load the bus with guns, ammo and anything they’d need to take on Joe, his goons and the corrupt cops that would be chasing after them.

“Engine’s tuned up as best we could get. What I’d like is for the boys in an escort car, but I know you already vetoed that idea,” Ace threw his hands up and walked around the bus to grab some more luggage. If Joe didn’t follow them directly, they would have to use the safe house as their base and hold it until they could kill Joe or get him arrested by cops not on his payroll.

“I did. I won’t let anyone get separated. We already lost Nux, I won’t let the other boys be in that position too.” Furiosa followed the older mechanic and disappeared from Slit’s view out the bus window. He and Coma had been tinkering with the CB, making sure they could monitor the frequencies as well as installing a police scanner to track local and not so local cops. 

Slit leaned back on the old brownish green bus seat and looked at the overcast sky. Nux was okay. Nux knew how to survive on his own.

“Move your feet,” Toast ordered and he dropped his legs to the floor, allowing her to sit on the bench seat across from him. “You think this is a stupid plan too?”

“No it’s… yes. It’s stupid. What do we do if he doesn’t follow us? We just sit there and wait for him? Or what? Just run away while he still has Nux stashed somewhere?” Slit sat up and looked at Toast. She looked just as angry as he was. “You going to keep running from him too?”

“No! I’m going to kill him. I’ll shoot him in his ugly face.” She crossed her arms and glared back at him.

He smiled knowing that his scars made it difficult for people to look at him, but Toast didn’t seem to be all that bothered by his happy grimace. “Good. Hopefully as soon as you take the bastard out, I can go off and get Nux. He’s gotta be somewhere close by so Corpus can keep an eye on him.”

“What if they already killed him?”

He ground his teeth and reigned in his temper. “No. They wouldn’t have done that. That’s… not what they do. Big, dramatic displays of power is how they work. It… it sells… the um… the whole god image.” He slowly took a couple of calming deep breaths, the kind his therapist used to make him do back when they first got released to Furiosa’s custody. 

“Did you really think he was a god?” She asked, her voice strangely gentle.

“When I was a kid… after I got to the compound, I was scared. Hungry. That’s where Nux and I met, sort of. We were picked up by the same van and so we sort of stuck together. We thought it was just… amazing that everyone had a cot to sleep on and we got regular meals. A fresh pair of pants. We all got taught to read and write. Basic math. After a while we got tested on different skills.” Slit sat up and leaned back against the window, his eyes focused on the treetops behind Toast’s head. “Nux got sent to the garages and I went to the pits.”

He took a few more deep breaths, secretly glad Toast sat there patiently while he worked through the story. Yeah, maybe they’d all been put through therapy at one time or another. “I never thought he was a god. I thought… I knew he was the top guy. Make him happy and you get some more leeway. He was easy to please. Hit real hard, be brutal, violent, hit the other guy until he stops moving and stays down. Winners got to roam around the compound. After a while, I was able to go to the garage and hang with Nux while he worked.”

Toast was deceptively quiet, so he hazarded a glance at her face. Her expression was thoughtful, but sad, so sign of that judgmental sneer she usually levels at him. 

“Morsov started winning too. So I took him to the garages with me. Nux taught us about cars on his downtime and we all split rations. When Nux got sick… we tried to hide it, helped him out. But the garage supervisor noticed and… took him to the Organic Mechanic. Kept him there a long time.”

Slit hadn’t seen Toast move, even though he’d been staring straight ahead the whole time. She knelt on the edge of his seat, her hand on his arm. “I’m sure he’s okay. He’s strong. You both are. We’ll kill this smeg and we’ll get him back.”

He slid his eyes from her face to her hand on his arm. “We?”

She snorted, “Yeah, because you can’t do shit by yourself. You need me to keep you in line.”

He laughed a little, a bitter twisted sort of snort, but something bubbled up and out of his chest that made the icy knot in his stomach untangle a little. “And you say I’m full of myself.”

“Yeah, you still are.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his scarred mouth and they kissed for the first time. They’d come close at Morsov’s house, but the old woman interrupted them and he couldn’t think of what happened then because he was too focused on right now and Toast was practically sitting in his lap, kissing him. She’s still kissing his jacked up face!

He felt her cold fingers trace the big scar on his stomach, the one where he almost lost his insides and he shoved her off him as gently as he could manage. “No…”

She nodded, pulled herself back together and retreated back to her seat. “Rain check. Got it.”

He wasn’t so sure why he stopped, but maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to fool around with this crazy girl while Nux was out there alone, or Furiosa was within twenty feet or fucking Coma was still sneaking around someplace. He nodded and got up stepping off the bus and into the glaring sun. 

He walked around Ace’s old garage and opened the trunk of his car. Two bags, identical, his bag on the left, one for Nux on the right. He checked Nux’s bag again, the inhaler was on top, ready to go. He grabbed the inhaler, stuck it in his jacket pocket and headed back to the bus to . 

“Hey.”

He’d avoided Furiosa for the past few days, still angry that she let that disgusting bastard take his brother away at all. He was still angry, but he no longer felt like planting his fist in her face for abandoning one person she promised to protect. “Hey.”

She stood in the aisle, blocking him from an easy escape. Dag and Angharad helped Valkyrie sort through supplies while blocking the rear exit. “We’re going to get him back.”

“I’m going to get him back. I don’t care what you do. I’m riding escort in my car. Soon as you get to the safe house, I’m going back for him.”

“No, Slit… Simon, he’ll be better off where he is, even with that horrible doctor.” She placed both hands on his shoulders, a gesture that usually made him feel safe, but today he shrugged her off.

“You don’t know what he used to do. He’d cut us up just because he could. And he took a liking to Nux. You just handed him over to that pervert, just like you kept us under Joe’s thumb. Now you’re going to save the neighbors before you get your own son back?” He knew he was attracting the others’ attention. He could hear Dag’s nonsense mutterings and Val trying to shush them.

He hoped to hurt her, budge that no-nonsense bullshit look from her face, but he didn’t. Instead, she reached for him again, her regular hand catching him and pulling him close, fingers on the back of his neck, on the scar of the brand they all wore. “Nux has cancer. It’s… it’s bad. Organic is a doctor, and he started treatment. Corpus informed me a few days ago. Right now… right now he’s safe and being taken care of. He’s getting treatment that he needs.”

Slit felt his world tilt on its side, his knees buckled and he grabbed onto Furiosa… as much as he hated her right now, he needed her support. She steadied him, wrapped her metal arm around his waist. He opened his mouth but a string of nonsense came out as his mouth couldn’t quite catch up to his brain in time.

“As long as he’s with Organic, he’ll be taken care of. Once we get rid of Joe, we’ll both get him to his regular doctors, okay? Organic won’t let him die.” She pressed hers and Slit’s foreheads together. Through his wet eyes he could see the pain in his adopted mother’s face. They were too much the same, stubborn and hardened on the outside and too proud to admit when they were terrified.

He nodded, not able to admit that she was right. Nux would be physically taken care of because Corpus wouldn’t want his leverage destroyed. He just hoped that Nux could hold on for a little bit longer.

They left in the middle of the night, everyone on the bus, Slit slipped into the window seat behind Furiosa, a .45 pistol ready in his hand. Coma slouched beside him, a pair of headphones on his ears as he flicked through the radio and police scanner. Ace took the opposite seat, Morsov behind him. The girls filled various places in the middle of the bus, their positions less important, except for Toast, who held an old shotgun and sat with Capable and Valkyrie next to the back exit.

By morning, they hit the state line, and had two cars “secretly” on their tail. None of them were Joe, but they weren’t obviously cops. When they couldn’t seem to shake the tail, Furiosa sped up as fast as the old bus could go and cut across three lanes of traffic to get off on a different highway. “Lost them for now, but who knows when they’ll be able to catch up.” She took the first exit off the second highway and looped around some back country roads before making it to a state road marked 570E. Ace read road names and changes off an actual paper map.

“We can get back on track taking 277 North. Be past Salt Flats by sundown.”


	15. The Green Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rain spattered hard on the windshield as Max hastily pulled over before he rammed the latest stolen car into the old stone wall that surrounded the property that Nux lead him to. Okay maybe he lost track of the muddy driveway with the storm and pitch blackness that was the backwater county that Furiosa’s property resided on.
> 
> “Nux, wake up.” He reached over, checked his passenger, hoping he would wake up and confirm that yes, they were in the right place and the feverish rambling directions were accurate enough to get them to a safe place until the storm died down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance if this chapter comes off as rambling and strange. Real life sort of stepped in and there was some frantic work overtime going on as well as a general laziness about writing. I have no idea when the next chapter will be, but thank you for continuing to stick with me.

Rain spattered hard on the windshield as Max hastily pulled over before he rammed the latest stolen car into the old stone wall that surrounded the property that Nux lead him to. Okay maybe he lost track of the muddy driveway with the storm and pitch blackness that was the backwater county that Furiosa’s property resided on.

“Nux, wake up.” He reached over, checked his passenger, hoping he would wake up and confirm that yes, they were in the right place and the feverish rambling directions were accurate enough to get them to a safe place until the storm died down.

“What?” Nux stirred and cracked open his eyes. 

“Think we got turned around a bit in the rain,” Max nodded towards the wall in front of them.

“Should be a… a big gate and a stone wall.” Nux squinted out the window. “Looks like a stone wall. Where’s the gate?”

“Dunno.” Max frowned and put the car in reverse, but the sickening spin of the tires made his heart drop.

“Shit, Max, we’re stuck. Why’d you pull off the driveway?” Nux blinked, struggled with his seatbelt and searched for the latch to open the door.

“Didn’t pull off the driveway, was no driveway, just all mud.” He hit the door locks, keeping Nux inside. “Don’t go out there, it’s pouring.”

“We’re stuck in the mud, Max. Not gonna get inside by sitting on our asses.” Nux turned and rummaged in the back seat, grabbing the EMT jacket and hat and he handed Max the bag of food they’d been eating. “Can get the rest in the morning.”

Nux pulled up the lock and stepped out into the downpour and walked along the wall. Max hastily grabbed what he could from the back and limped along after him. Max was soaked through by the time they made it to the gate. 

“It’s locked, you uh… you got some bolt cutters back in the car?” Nux rasped, his breath shuddering in the cold.

“No. You think you can climb it?” Max wasn’t sure if he could, but spending the night in the car wasn’t an option now. Nux tossed the bag over the wall and then scrambled up the latticed gate and sat on top of the wall.

“Come on old man!” The kid grinned at him and Max wondered if the kid was as sick as he looked.

The climb wasn’t bad, but his leg protested and the drop down to the muddy ground jarred his injured knee and he stifled a scream with a clenched jaw. Nux pulled him up and together they limped through the mud and rain into the house. Thankfully it only took a good hit to the door from Max’s shoulder to get inside the old house and out of the rain.

Nux stripped off his coat and boots and soaked clothes into a pile by the door, leaving him naked and unembarrassed as he moved through the old house to the living room where there was a big fireplace and furniture covered in white cloth protectors. The kid looked like a ghost haunting the place.

Max limped in behind the kid and found some kindling and a couple of logs left over that should burn well enough to keep off the chill. “See if there are matches anywhere.” 

Nux nodded, shaking out one of the furniture covers and wrapping it around his form. 

It was ages ago, but Max still remembered how to build a fire at Jesse’s aunt’s house. Nux returned with a phone book that was older than he was and a box of wooden matches. 

Paper. Kindling. Log. Max lit the match and waited with bated breath until the fire caught. Only then, he noticed Nux wheezing, wrapped up in the furniture cloth. “Dust bothering you?”

A nod followed by a string of nasty dry coughs. 

“Can’t do much about the dust, but might be able to get us some dry clothes.” He limped through the house, checking every closet until he found some old storage containers full of old musty clothes. Flannel shirts and overalls. He drug the box into the living room and threw some clothes Nux’s way. His second trip yielded a pile of old quilts. When he returned to the room, Nux set his shoes by the fire as well as his hoodie and coat. 

Max changed into a dry flannel that was a size too large and leaned on the wall near the fireplace, not feeling like taking a look at his mangled knee. 

Nux was already asleep, his long legs tucked up as he tried to fit on a couch made for sitting and not six-foot-three teenagers to sleep on. The wheezing was worrying, but there wasn’t much Max could help with. He covered Nux with one of the quilts and sat down in a chair by the fire, intent on keeping watch but he felt his eyelids droop and decided that sleep would probably be better for them both.

He woke early, checked on Nux and threw another blanket on the kid. Now that the sun was out, the weather was warm enough to open a few windows to air the place out. He found some wood stacked up in the old barn and carried it inside. He spent a longer time than he wanted to trying to find a breaker box to see if there was still power in the house. When all he could find was an old water pump, he filled a pot from the kitchen, started the fire up again and put the water on to boil.

“Max?” Nux stirred from the couch and sat up carefully. “Ugh. What… what do we need to do?”

“Got some more wood. Boiling some water. Got some cans of soup if you’re hungry.” Max sat down on the couch next to Nux, handing him a soup can with a pull-tab lid.

“Maybe in a minute. You uh… check out the bathroom yet?”

“Yeah, there’s a bucket of water for flushing.”

Nux shakily shuffled to the bathroom. Max found some dishes and another pot to heat up the can of chicken noodle. He poured the hot soup in two mugs 

The kid is still in the bathroom, he can hear the kid wrestle with the water bucket, attempting to wash up after another feverish night. They need to get out of there. Need to get proper medical attention. 

Max limped towards the living room again, not wanting to hover over the kid when he hears the crunch of what little gravel was left on the old driveway. Someone got through the gate and was coming. “Nux, we got company!” The mugs were abandoned and the shotgun picked up. He positioned himself partially in the nook that might have once been a coat closet, aiming the gun at the door.

He couldn’t see out the windows that surrounded the front door because they were boarded up, but he knew that his kicking of the door last night wouldn’t go unnoticed. One, two, maybe three sets of not-so-quiet feet on the porch. Indistinct whispers turned to a mumbled argument. He wished they would hurry so he could sit down, his knee was throbbing again.

The door swung open at the barest touch and three figures were silhouetted against the afternoon sun. “Don’t Move.” He warned, the shotgun aimed at the middle figure as Max squinted into the light.

“Rockatansky?” 

The familiar voice cut through his tension and he lowered his gun a touch in surprise. “Jobassa?”

The strange reunion was interrupted by the rib-shattering coughs from the living room. One of the three shadows in the doorway resolved itself to be Slit, pushing past Furiosa to get inside and Max was glad for the company… suddenly very tired. He set the shotgun down and gestured everyone inside, glad that Slit was already sitting on the floor beside Nux, pressing an inhaler to his mouth and coaching him to breathe.

More footsteps and Max found himself smothered, surrounded, several pairs of arms grabbing him and he froze, panicked, until he looked straight in Angharad’s eyes. “It’s us. We’re safe. You’re safe.” A quick headcount proves that all five girls are with him, though Capable’s clutching his sleeve a little too tightly. He gently nudges her towards Nux and she takes up the spot in front of him. There are others… Valkyrie, Ace and the other two boys and another woman. 

He felt himself get pushed towards a chair and everyone started talking at once. He found himself explaining how he got jumped at the station, how he was taken to a defunct hospital and found Nux. He skimmed over the escape, not wanting his girls to realize he’d killed several men to get away, but he knows they know. Angharad’s eyes are distant and her mouth set in a line. They disagree on such a fundamental level he’s not sure why she is still sitting at his side. 

“And Nux led us here. Got in last night, tried to air it out.” He ended, exhausted at last. Someone cursed up a storm from somewhere nearby and then the lights flickered to life. Must’ve been in the basement where he hadn’t checked yet. 

“Everybody get out of here and let me check his knee,” Valkyrie helped him up and to one of the other rooms and helped him get the brace and pants off. “Nothing seems broken. Could be a bad tear though. Probably need surgery but the brace should help for now.” 

He dressed again, grateful that the nurse turned her back while he did so. “What’s the plan?”

“Draw out Joe, lead him away from the town where he has his people, force him to do something illegal where he can’t buy himself out. You and Nuxy being here is just gravy.” She packed up her medical kit and turned back to look at him. “He got some treatment, which is good. But he needs a hospital.”

He knew as much, the kid glossed over what that creepy doctor did to him. “How do we know Mortan’s not in the pockets of anyone higher?”

“We don’t. So we have to kill him and most of his crew when they come for us,” Furiosa stood in the doorway. “I’m tired of having him and his people run our lives. The only way he’ll be out of our hair is if he’s six feet under.”

Max understood the look on her face. He’s seen it a million times, on a million different parents: the need to protect her children. He grunted in agreement as he got to his feet. 

As soon as he reentered the living room, Cheedo and Dag were at his side, telling him about the “war rig” and how they were going to be fine missing so much school. He eased himself down on the couch and Toast handed him a mug of fresh coffee. “Thanks.”

“I’m going to check in with Slit and Capable then I’m going to help Furiosa with the outside watch. Coma and Ace are keeping track of the police scanner and CB. Coma’s mother is in the kitchen trying to take stock of the food situation. Morsov is working on getting more water. Angharad is outside.” Toast and Angharad didn’t always see eye to eye, but he felt that it might be a problem if they all weren’t on the same page. 

“Cheedo, go help in the kitchen. Dag, your arms aren’t broke, go help with the water,” He looked up at Toast as the younger girls went off to do their assigned tasks. “If Nux is sleeping, and he should be, have Slit and Capable join on the watch. I want you going through any weapons we might have.”

“Yeah, sure.” She nodded and left him alone. 

He was going to have to speak with Angharad sooner or later. And later might not be a good time. His empty coffee mug told him it was time and he levered out of the chair and thumped his way down the hallway to the back door, finding Angharad standing in the middle of the tall grass, yellow hair whipping around her face.

He stood on the top step of the back porch. “You’re pissed.”

“I am,” she turned towards him, but her gaze didn’t leave the overgrown field. “You’re an officer of the law. You arrest people, you don’t kill them.”

“Sometimes… sometimes I have to.”

“Who killed the world then, Max?” She looked at him then, her eyes bright with anger. “All the killing… it never ends. You kill Mortan and his people and someone will be left to kill us back and it never stops until everyone is dead!”

“What would you have me do? Would you have rather I stayed kidnapped? Listening to that doctor do God-knows-what to Nux? He isn’t a thing to be had either, Angharad. We did what we had to do to get out of there. Just like when I helped you and the other girls out of Mortan’s.” He was tired of defending himself, tired of being on edge, and just plain tired. He scrubbed at his face, knowing he looks as ragged as he feels.

“No unnecessary killing.” She looked straight at him and then marched off to help Dag and Morsov with the well pump.


	16. Night Watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re supposed to be keeping watch,” Nux mumbled, his eyes still closed from his sleeping bag on the floor. “Which means you should be watching the road and not me.”
> 
> “I am watching the road,” Capable huffed and turned back to the window in the attic of the farmhouse. “But I’m going to make sure you’re okay too.” 
> 
> Nux sat up and drug the sleeping bag closer, so he could settle down next to her, his back leaning against the wall. “There, now you know I’m fine and you can see out the window.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mild teenage fumblings and some morbid talk.

“You’re supposed to be keeping watch,” Nux mumbled, his eyes still closed from his sleeping bag on the floor. “Which means you should be watching the road and not me.”

“I am watching the road,” Capable huffed and turned back to the window in the attic of the farmhouse. “But I’m going to make sure you’re okay too.” 

Nux sat up and drug the sleeping bag closer, so he could settle down next to her, his back leaning against the wall. “There, now you know I’m fine and you can see out the window.”

She pulled her binoculars away from her face and looked at him, really looked. His eyes were dark hollows, his skin was chalk white and there wasn’t one bit of fat left on him. “You aren’t fine. You’re...” she couldn’t bring herself to even say the words… cancer… dying… they brought painful memories, making her heart hurt with every wheeze of his breath.

“There’s nothing that anyone can do right now, is there?” He snapped, turning away from her, hurt and anger in his voice.

“I’m sorry.” She chewed her lip and looked back out the window, but she threaded her fingers through his. “I’m sorry. I was… I was just so worried about you. I kept… thinking all the worst things.”

The old country road was empty, and all the lights in the area were off, there was nothing out there and it was easy to pretend that she and Nux were the only ones in the entire world right now. He squeezed her fingers and settled back against the wall again. She leaned over, setting the binoculars down on the floor, and pressed her lips to his. “I missed you.”

His dry lips turned up in a smile. “Missed you too. Hey it’s getting late,” he gestured towards the window, “probably about time for a shift change anyway.”

“Toast and the others are outside by the wall.” She scooted closer to him, taking both his hands. “I don’t think anyone would mind if we took a break.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. You want to get some coff-”

She cut him off with her kiss, and she vaguely heard the back of his head thump against the wall. She straddled his skinny hips and pressed her tongue through his parted lips. The more rational part of her mind chastised her for being so forward… so forceful. But the terrified part of her didn’t want to miss any chances; they were together right now and this time would not be wasted. 

“Cape…” Nux’s hands were on her shoulders, tangling in her curls.

She leaned into his warm skin, her hands drifting underneath his t-shirt.

“Capable!” He pushed her back, short of breath. He gracelessly maneuvered her off his lap and curled his knees up against his chest. “S-sorry… I just… I can’t. Not right now.”

“Hey… no… no… I’m sorry, I just… I got a little carried away.” She scooted back beside him and gently wrapped her arm around his shoulder, letting him rest his head on her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

He curled one of his arms around her back and closed his eyes. “Everything hurts and I haven’t really had a good shower since… forever ago and haven’t had a toothbrush for a while and I threw up earlier and I’m just… sorry. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“It’s okay, really. I shouldn’t have done that. At all. I didn’t even ask if it was okay or if you wanted it and I should know better.” She let go of him and grabbed her own rolled up sleeping bag. 

“You don’t have to go. I want to be close, just not… not that close.” He slipped in the warm envelope of his temporary bed and curled up so that the material was up to his nose.

“Are you sure you don’t want to find one of the beds or the couch to sleep on?” She set herself up beside him, leaving six inches of space and two barriers of fabric between them.

“No, that couch isn’t long enough and the beds are about as hard as the floor. Tried them earlier before you guys got here.” He shifted again and rolled onto his back.

“It must be so terrible being tall,” she teased, kicking her shoes off and laying down. 

“It is, nothing ever fits. Everyone always asks you to reach for stuff. Tucking into small spaces is a lot harder than it used to be.” He shuffled himself again, rolling onto each side and then back on his back.

“What’s wrong with you? I mean, right now. Why are you so jumpy?” She sat up, but kept her hands to herself, trying not to hover.

“Back hurts. And I can’t get comfortable. And it’s hot up here.” He pulled off his t-shirt and tossed it aside, laying back again.

“I have an idea.” She nearly fell down the narrow staircase, but now that she had an idea of how to help, she carefully made her way towards the darkened living room.

“Who’s there?” 

Squinting, she made out Coma’s figure, perched on the chair sideways, his legs hanging off the arm. “It’s just me. Capable.” She picked her way across the floor, but only managed to hit every single one of the squeaky floorboards. “Is that box of quilts still here?”

“Dunno, I didn’t touch them. Why? You and Nux making a… a love nest?” She could see his uneven grin in the darkness.

“No… it’s… he can’t sleep and… why are you still awake?” She found the box and pulled out a couple of the thicker blankets.

“I have trouble sleeping sometimes. New place with new sounds and smells. And the feeling that any minute we could have Joe and all his minions shooting at us. That sure doesn’t help.” He swung his feet, still wearing sneakers and re-settled in the chair.

“No, it doesn’t. You want to come up to the attic with us?” Nux usually did better with more people around, or maybe he just hid his complaints better. Maybe she should find someplace else to bunk down for the night.

“Nah, you go ahead. Careful though, he’s clingy when he sleeps.”

“I’ll be careful. Thanks.” Coma’s comment made her think of the boys as they were years ago, still cute and relatively unscarred, before sickness and the harsh life of growing up in Joe’s shadow formed them into what they are now.

The trip up the stairs was no less hazardous than her descent, but she remained unscathed from her trip. When she got there, Nux had flopped down on his stomach, his hands over his head.

“Still awake?” 

Her whisper was met with an irritated groan. “Okay, sit up for a minute.” Nux rolled off the sleeping bag and coughed, closing his eyes as she arranged both sleeping bags and the quilts down into one big blanket pile. “Alright, come on.”

He crawled into the blanket pile and lay down on his back, closing his eyes. She lay down next to him on her side, watching him settle down. “Better?”

Nux reached out and she scooted closer, gently laying her head gently on his shoulder. “Yeah.” He wrapped his arm around her and was quiet for so long she thought he fell asleep. “What are you going to do after school?”

That was an unexpected question that pulled her out of her thoughts of what might happen in the morning. “Max wants us to go to college, but I don’t know what I’d want to do.”

“You don’t have any ideas at all?”

She sighed and traced the lines of the engine block etched into Nux’s chest. “No. I mean… yes, but, I can’t decide on one thing. Last year I wanted to be an artist, the year before that I wanted to be a teacher. Neither of those pay very well though. Maybe I’ll be a baker.”

“I don’t know Capable. I know you can probably do anything you put your mind to, but those cookies you made… they weren’t all that good.” He chuckled, and picked at one of the red curls that fell against his chest.

“That was Toast’s fault. She kept arguing and I didn’t get to take them out when the timer went off.” She watched as he tried to straighten the lock and let it bounce back.

“Sure, keep telling yourself that.” He seemed fascinated by her hair, but maybe it was because he’d been shaving his head since before he can remember.

“Well what about you? What do you want to do?” 

From her vantage point, she saw him twitch as he let the curl spring back and fall against his shoulder. “Oh I figure I’ll probably work for Ace in the garage… if it’s still there when we get back. Always had a knack for cars and engines. I’m good at driving too so maybe that’s something I’ll do too.”

Capable has spent enough time with Nux by now to know when he’s holding something back. She heard what he didn’t say and the realization hit home that he never even expected to live this long. Probably expected to be dead on arrival as soon as that ambulance took him away from his home. The tension in his arms told her not to press it, not to cry. He knew that she knew that his time is short and it’s only downhill from here. “Sounds really nice, working with family.”

She waited until his breathing settled and he started snoring before she carefully slipped away. The binoculars in hand, she leaned against the window, looking out for their enemies. The scrape of a boot and a shadow crossing the covered lantern made Capable turn, though she settled when she saw Furiosa kneeling next to Nux.

“How’s he doing?” 

Capable opened her mouth, wanting to say so much, but instead she put Nux’s words to the older woman. “There’s nothing that anyone can do right now.”

Furiosa nodded, as if expecting that answer and silently crept around beside Capable. “How are you?” 

“I’m… holding together.” And she was, so long as she didn’t look at Nux too long or watch Max limp around or notice how much Cheedo clung to Dag and Angharad.

“Here. When he wakes up, you give him these,” Furiosa deposited a plastic bag full of multi-colored pharmacology in her hand. “We need him functional.”

“Functional? That’s…” Cruel, she wanted to say. But she looked at the bag and then at Nux and nodded. Joe was coming, and they couldn’t have anything slowing them down. “Alright.”

The older woman nodded again. “Stick close to him when things get messy. The boys know how to handle themselves in a fight.”

“Will there be fighting?” She hoped, desperately hoped that no enemies would show up on their door. That Joe threw up his hands in the affairs of two families and wrote them off like a bad check.

“There will be. And you need to keep with the boys. They’ll protect you.” Furiosa stood and crept back to the stairs, lingering only for one last look at her sleeping son. “Try to get some sleep.”

Alone with her thoughts, she tucked herself back in the blanket nest beside Nux, settling down next to the warmth of his body. She tried not to think of what might happen in the morning; she just settled into the world next to the only boy she’s ever loved.


	17. Duel at Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Green Place used to be a functioning orchard and farm where Furiosa’s happiest memories took place. She remembered the barn before the roof rotted out, and the tools kept there when they were for cultivating the land. She spent all night with Ace sharpening shovels and pitchforks to use as weapons against Joe’s army as if they were an unruly peasant mob to clash against a greedy tax collector or terrible king.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this chapter is so late. Writing action is not my forte, but the long-awaited battle begins.

The Green Place used to be a functioning orchard and farm where Furiosa’s happiest memories took place. She remembered the barn before the roof rotted out, and the tools kept there when they were for cultivating the land. She spent all night with Ace sharpening shovels and pitchforks to use as weapons against Joe’s army as if they were an unruly peasant mob to clash against a greedy tax collector or terrible king.

Coffee was made every three hours, Furiosa didn’t allow herself to sleep until the preparations were ready, the vehicles moved and positioned, the weapons laid out and ready to be fired. She let the children sleep, but kept Val, Max and Ace with her, going over plans. Slit sat in, nodding off at points, but mostly listening. She caught a twenty-minute nap before the shouting started.

Toast spotted the first shine of morning sun off of the highly polished and heavily armored cars, SUVs and trucks that escorted their enemy towards the safehouse. Slit and Morsov spent most of the night building homemade IEDs and planting them alongside the dirt driveway and all throughout the front yard. Furiosa didn’t like remembering that’s what the boys grew up doing, but it was necessary. Just as it was necessary that she put a rifle in Nux’s shaking hands and pushed him up the stairs to try to lay some cover fire.

Max limped after her, “Gate’s not gonna stop them.”

They pulled the war rig behind the house, on one of the old dirt paths that lead to the other fields and to another back country road, in case they needed to abandon the house. “No. But the fireworks might buy us some time.” 

A loud explosion at the gate blew three of Joe’s goons off the gate and hopefully put them out of commission for good. 

“I’ve waited long enough Furiosa! Give me my girls back!” Joe’s growl over a megaphone sounded through the smoke. A large truck rammed the old gate. Rifles cracked in the air and dropped one of the men climbing up the old wall. She raised her own gun and picked off another.

“Never!”   
“No way!”  
“WE ARE NOT THINGS!” 

She could hear Val explain to Angharad and Clara, Ace’s wife and Coma’s mother about field medicine as she passed. 

“The war boys are usually on something, keeps them fearless and able to ignore the pain. You wait until they’re down before you drag them out of the way. Otherwise they’ll fight and kick and bite until you put them down.” 

She remembers the battle high and knows her boys sometimes still crave it. She moves along past Dag and Cheedo and their water buckets and sand buckets. They prepared for fire, though two extinguishers weren’t enough, hopefully the sand and water could buy them enough time to exit the house and fall back to the war rig.

Various calls and shouts from the house called back, another gun sounded as the truck broke open the gate. A dozen men streamed off the back of the truck and into the space between the gate and the front porch. Another one of Slit’s mines exploded, sending dirt and smoke into the air. Joe’s men weren’t armed well. At least not these ones, the cannon fodder, the boys who grew up with hers and weren’t saved. But there was no time to think of what could have been.

As predicted, a barrage of flaming Molotov cocktails were thrown towards the house, most missed and hit the damp grass, but two had Dag and Cheedo stomping at flames and kicking sand around while keeping under cover of the old metal sheets they lashed to the porch rails.

Furiosa ducked and directed Slit and Morsov from their place in the shed to start picking them off at the side and moved for better cover behind the antique tractor they pulled to the front yard. She fired off a couple of shots, dropping another raging war boy to the mud.

Toast crouched behind an oil drum, carefully separating and counting bullets, loading extra clips and trying to be as useful as she can without a gun in her own hands. She wanted to shoot, to kill, to take her own life back, but this was a compromise with her sister, one she would make so long as they left free.

Max stood beside her, his gun adding to the din, he took out knees, dropping opponents without killing them. Perhaps he was a believer in redemption. She took her freshly reloaded gun from Toast and followed Max’s lead. When the smoke cleared the truck that had broken the fence had been moved. “Down!”

Furiosa dived on top of Toast as the machine gun spray passed over them and collapsed part of their cover. She heard cursing from the house and several returning shots, but she lost sight of Max in the confusion. 

“Take that you dirty smeg! Can’t even fight your own battles, can you!” She thinks it’s Dag shouting, but the words that come from the fifteen-year-old’s mouth seem more in place with her aunts and their biker gang.

Toast shouted at her, shaking her head. “There’s no more ammo! Come on, let’s go!” 

Ace left the cover of the barn and hopped the wall, carrying the wickedly sharpened pitchfork with him. Slit crawled along the wall and used his shovel to get anyone left within reach. Ammo seemed to be low on both sides, and the cries and roars were quieting down on Joe’s side. 

She could see him, his face behind the oxygen max, standing up through the moon roof of his custom SUV. “Come and get me if you can, Mortan!” She shouted, bringing her metal hand up to point at him.

The ram truck was moved, backed out and Coma shouted a warning, something picked up on the radios but the words were lost in Dag’s swears and the revving of an engine. 

There’s shouting and shots fired, but not towards the house. A large figure rides on top of a custom jeep that’s picking up speed on the front lawn. “I’ll get you all!” The voice sounds young, but enraged, probably on more drugs than the rest. His police-issue swat gear made him difficult to drop. He won’t come off that car easy. 

“Rick!” The window behind Furiosa and Toast opened and Cheedo sprung out, dressed in her pink and white flannel, her hair in long pigtails. “Rick! Please! Take me back! I wanna go home!” She cried and the car skidded to a stop. The large man bent down and picked Cheedo up and set her in the open top jeep. 

“No! Cheedo!” Furiosa took off running, but a pale blur leapt from the porch roof and onto the armored man, knocking him to the mud below. Nux threw furious punches and jammed what looked like a kitchen knife in an opening of the man’s armor. 

Morsov slipped up and took out the driver of the car and helped Cheedo down. Slit joined Nux in the fray with Rick Mortan… Joe’s youngest son. She hoped her boys could show restraint against the slow bully, but she knew they were trained to kill their enemies. But there’s no more time for hopes because the giant is down and not moving.

She jogged over to see Slit and Nux almost collapsed against each other over the unconscious man. “Go help Max,” Nux gasped. The rifle cracked from the attic and Capable’s red hair could be seen with a flash of the barrel of the gun. “GO!”

As she ran, she heard Val and Angharad issuing orders to the others. Ace started a triage of the wounded thugs. Morsov and Slit followed behind her, picking up any lost weapons they could find. Cheedo ran to Coma’s arms in the safety of the house. Dag and Clara brought things to and from the house. 

Behind her, the battle was over, but ahead she could still hear fighting. Max’s grunt, Joe’s wheezing. She skidded to a stop, finding the gunman from earlier dead and Joe Mortan using his cane to choke the cop. She fires two shots. One hit her former boss in the shoulder, causing him to ease up the pressure on Max’s throat and dropping the cop to the ground outside the car. The second shot misses, due to the shouting from the yard. Someone screams and her world tilts as someone jams a knife in her side. Max is at her side, hovering over her as she hears the SUV pull away.

Max shot the man that stabbed her and applied pressure to her side. “Valkyrie! Get over here! Someone… someone bring me a phone! I… need a phone.” He barked orders in his loudest “officer voice” and Val was by her side in a moment. Angharad pressed a cell phone in his hand.

“Goose? It’s me. I’m… calling in that favor you owe me. It’s… pretty big.” Max’s voice trailed off as he paced away, his eldest daughter trailing him.

“Hang on, Furi, I got you,” Val cut and pull and pressed, calling orders to Clara and Dag.

“The boys?” She croaked, her mouth dry and she looks for the pale faces of her sons.

“They’re together in the yard, try not to talk, alright?” Val spoke evenly in her most professional voice.

“Ace and Coma are making sure all the boys are tied up,” Clara said calmly wiping Furiosa’s forehead. “Morsov is disarming the mines that didn’t blow.” The world got dark around the edges and breathing became more difficult.

Max was at her side, an inarticulate argument and rushed apology later, she felt a pressure in her side and she didn’t feel like she was suffocating.

She came to amidst the familiar beeps and smells of a hospital. Through the painkiller haze, she managed to pry her eyes open.

“You awake Boss?” Ace appeared before her, leaning over the bed rail.

“What happened? Where is everyone?” She remembered shooting at Joe to save Max, but everything else seemed like a dream.

Ace settled back in his chair. “All of Joe’s men that came after us are either in jail or dead. Specifically, Rick is dead, so is Joe’s fatass sidekick, the one they call People Eater.” He sighed and scrubbed at his face a little. “On our side, Angharad got cut in the leg that needed stitches, Slit broke an arm and a couple ribs. Nux is in surgery right now, not fight related but they’re taking out the cancerous lymph nodes. They’ll get him back on treatment too.”

She tried to take it all in, forcing her brain to process the new information. “Where’s Max? And Joe?” She would have to push her worries about her sons aside for the moment, they were safe for the moment, injuries and illness aside.

“Rockatansky called in a friend from the FBI and it’s all a big mess. Those of us that weren’t injured were arrested and processed, but I guess they’ve been looking into Joe for a while. All of us but Max got let loose. Haven’t heard from him in a while, maybe he’s working with the Feds or he’s taking the fall for the deaths.” Ace shrugged again, looking older and more tired than she’s ever seen. “Joe got away when you were stabbed. Every law enforcement officer is looking for him. Kalashnikov and several other officers went underground as of yesterday morning.”

She lay back against the pillows of the hospital bed. “How long have I been out?”

“Three days. You were awake before but not very lucid. You want me to find Slit for you? I think he’s with Val waiting on Nux.” He started out of his chair.

“No, not yet. What are we supposed to do now, Ace? We can’t go home, can we?”

“No. Feds want to do protective custody. Angharad, that stubborn girl, won’t let them separate any of us. So they’re scrambling to find someplace big enough for us all.” He seemed impressed by the eldest Rockatansky sister’s attitude.

“Good. Wake me up when Nux is out of surgery. I’m going to close my eyes again.” She let sleep overtake her, her worries would be waiting for her when she woke.


	18. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl curled up against him, careful of his injuries and made herself comfortable against his side. “Capable was having nightmares and Dag kicks in her sleep.” She whispered, then closed her eyes as if curling up next to his ugly ass was the most normal and logical thing to do to get a better night’s sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so incredibly long to get this chapter out. And that it is so short on top of that. This story is winding down to the end, but I still have a little more to write. Life just keeps getting in the way of writing. If you're still reading this, thank you! You guys are great.

Slit lay awake in the shitty hotel room he’d been assigned by the federal agent in charge of finding them all a place to stay until it was “safe” to go home. Joe was still out there, but his muscle was scattered and in disarray. Nux and Furiosa were still in the hospital and he’d been told to take it easy. Morsov and Coma curled up in the other bed, leaving Slit and his stupid broken ribs and dumb broken wrist the bed to himself. He refused the painkillers he’d been prescribed, not wanting to be dependent on drugs. 

The door between the boys’ room and the girls’ room opened quietly, it had been propped open with a pair of boots, since keeping those doors locked was a no-go from the start. Toast slipped through the opening and crawled into bed with him. She was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, he was glad he’d at least thought to not sleep naked like he normally does.

The girl curled up against him, careful of his injuries and made herself comfortable against his side. “Capable was having nightmares and Dag kicks in her sleep.” She whispered, then closed her eyes as if curling up next to his ugly ass was the most normal and logical thing to do to get a better night’s sleep.

He drifted off feeling the pins and needles in his good hand, wondering if this was like the moment in the war rig, days ago (had it only been days?) when she kissed him and he pushed her away. This must be revenge.

As soon as the clock hit five, he slipped out of Toast’s grip, grabbed a fresh set of clothes and stepped into the hall. He found the FBI watchdog sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper. “I want to see my brother.”

The man nodded. “I’ll call someone to drive you.” 

He retreated into the room to find Toast staring at him. “Leaving already?”

“I’m not going to waste time hanging around in this shithole.”

Coma rolled over to face them. “Good, it stinks in here.” He shoved Morsov in the shoulder. “Wake up, we’re going to the hospital.”

The door between rooms opened and Capable poked her head through, her red hair looked more like a clown wig. “We’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

An hour later, Slit sat beside Nux’s bed, watching the fucker sleep with a tube in his throat. Capable fidgeted in the chair next to his, worrying the hem of her t-shirt. She wasn’t the hospital-visiting veteran that he was and still jumped every time a nurse opened the door to check the machines.

“Settle down. Jesus, he’ll wake up when he wakes up.” He shifted in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position where his ribs didn’t feel like they were cutting up the rest of his insides. Eventually he stood up, clamping his hand against his side. “Gonna take a walk. He’d probably want to see you first anyway.” 

“Oh. Okay.” Capable chewed her lip and nodded. 

He patted her on the head on his way out, shoving the odd familial thoughts out of his mind. Capable felt like the missing piece of Nux, she seemed to fill the holes his ill health and shitty upbringing left in him. Did Toast fit with him as snugly as she curled into his side last night? When did those feelings of hate turn into the odd and intense attraction?

When he stood in front of the other hospital room, he sighed carefully and turned the handle and entered a different hospital room. “Mom?”

“How’d you know I was awake?” She muttered sleepily.

“Figured you were already annoyed with being trapped here.” He carefully sat down on the edge of her bed. She looked pale and exhausted, the most… human… she’d ever looked. Furiosa Jobassa had been a legendary figure in the shops and when she’d singled him and Morsov out of those in the pits and Nux from the garage, he felt like he’d actually been wanted for the first time in his life. 

“Are you still pissed at me?” She reached over to pat his knee.

He hadn’t quite thought of her as being able to fuck up until Nux was taken. Now he found he wasn’t mad, just happy that she wasn’t killed and all their people were alive and reasonably safe.

“No. Things just worked out. Nux is finally going to get better. We might be able to go home in the next ten years.” He couldn’t hold back his sarcasm. He had no faith in the agents to capture Joe, so he had mentally written off his home and school. Possessions were meaningless, but he’d miss the normalcy of a set schedule and familiar surroundings.

“How is he? They won’t let me see him yet.” She withdrew her hand and let it drop to the bed.

“Unconscious. Breathing tube. Still skinny, pale and horrible. Haven’t been able to talk to his doctor yet. Not that he’d tell me anything.” No matter where they were, doctors were always the same, snubbing him whenever he asked questions, treating him and Nux like dumb children. Just another thing that was irritating about this situation. Now the FBI agents and Marshals and fuckall law enforcement goons were treating them like idiots.  
“Find him and bring him in here. I have questions. A lot of them. For all these doctors and whoever is in charge of the Joe case.” He stalked the halls again, walking the path from Furiosa’s room back to Nux’s. 

Slit spotted the oncologist lurking outside of Nux’s room, chart in hand, her gray-streaked brown hair pulled back in a bun. “Hey Doc, our Mom wants to talk to you.”

The doctor looked up at him and frowned, she was a stern-looking motherly type, her eyes partially covered with a pair of unflattering reading glasses. “You must be Simon Jobassa then?” 

“Yeah,” He nodded though he never felt comfortable with his legal name. 

“I have some time now before Nick wakes up. His vitals look good.” The doctor, whose nametag read Dr. K.T. Concannon. He was only a little grateful for the smalltalk, but so much walking around was making his side ache. He was going to have to sit the fuck down for a while before he found where the others had run off to. Toast mentioned in the car trying to find where Max had been taken.

Once he got back to Furiosa’s room, he gingerly lay on the empty bed and tried to stay awake while the two women spoke. He seemed to only have blinked and all of a sudden Furiosa’s room was crowded with the Rockatansky clan, Ace, Morsov and Coma. He binked up to see Toast perched on the bed with him. “What’s going on?”

Morsov leaned over from the chair he’d been slouched in, “We’re being turned over to Witness Protection. They going to put us in some rural place out West. Max is already there and Grandma and Valkyrie are on their way out there now. They’re sending all of us except Furiosa and Nux tomorrow.”

He turned his eyes towards Capable as she fumed in the corner, obviously unhappy about the separation.

“Once Nux is able to travel, he and I will join the rest of you.” Furiosa paused, waiting for the murmuring to calm down before she addressed them again. “Ace and Clara are in charge of packing up our households and getting them in order for sale. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of living in that desert shithole.”

Slit nodded, he’d miss the track team, but he could run anywhere, especially if everyone was going to be okay. “But we are staying together, right?”

Angharad’s face leaned past Furiosa’s and nodded. “I made sure of it. If we couldn’t be together, we wouldn’t go at all. Joe brought us together, but like hell will he separate us now.”

At least that was one thing they could say about all this. He’d trust these people over any other shithead that he ran into outside of Joe’s organization. He shook his thoughts aside and saw Toast staring at him again.

“What?” He realized that the others were leaving the room, giving him and Toast some semi-privacy.

“Nothing. You feel better? We’re going to get shuttled back to the motel soon. Pizzas are being ordered for dinner.” She still looked at him with an odd expression.

“Uh yeah, didn’t realize how shitty I slept last night.” He blurted out and then regretted it.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“N-no… not that. I mean, before you showed up.” He kicked himself a little, he had enjoyed her wrapped up next to him. “I mean, if you want to get away from the others again tonight… Morsov sleeps like a brick and Coma is half-deaf so they won’t notice.”

Toast frowned, “Is he really?”

It was an odd question to ask at the time, but he realized that Toast didn’t know Coma too well. And if being blind wasn’t bad enough, being deaf on top was getting extra servings off the shit-pile of existence. “In one ear, yeah. He wears a hearing aid most of the time when he remembers to.” 

“Oh.” She nodded and thought about something, her face scrunching up a little before she slid off the bed. “Do you need help?”

The sudden topic shift made him pause and then he realized that only Furiosa was left on the other side of the room. “No.” He started to get up, gasped and fell back on the hospital bed. “Yes.”

She didn’t laugh at him, just gently helped him sit up and he sat there breathing a minute before she helped lever him off the bed. Once he was on his own two feet, she didn’t let go of his good hand. He purposely jogged his ribs so he’d stop thinking like an idiot now that Toast was hanging onto him.

He stopped next to Furiosa’s bed and she reached up to touch him on the arm, knowing that bending down would be a bad idea. “Hey, be careful, Nux is bound to get himself into trouble, even while being asleep.”

She laughed a little. “He’s always been like that. You remember when he got stuck in the engine compartment of the old war rig?”

Slit remembered Nux before his growth spurt as a scrawny wisp of a thing, made for sticking his hands into tiny spaces the adult mechanics couldn’t reach. “He was so filthy with grease and oil, I’m surprised he didn’t just slide out on his own.” 

They shared a careful laugh and Toast lead him back to where their ride was. For once he felt okay with being uprooted from his life.


End file.
